When a good sized ship is 3,000 TEUs. Check out this monster ship, the Emma Maersk, designed and built to haul Walmart goods China to USA. Check out this video overview. As a lad circa 1970 friends and I would go down to the docks and visit with the Soviet ships and practice Russian. The sailors who built the ships were obliged to sail them in the Soviet system, something of a quality control method.
Impressive...and the amazing thing is in spite of the fact it is five times bigger than the standard ship, it sttill only takes 13 people to crew it. Protectionists are circulating this ship and its purpose as an example of trade distortion, noting the ship sails back to China empty. But it goes back empty because it moves so fast, and is dedicated to walmart... why waste time loading and unloading westbound traffic when so much money in the eastbound (to usa?) USA still exports plenty to china, just on other ships... at 15,000 teus, this equals five other ships, but big deal, there are hundreds plying the trade... the ship makes more money in one way trade than it could in 2 way...
Monday, February 14, 2011
15,000 TEUs
Walmart had a problem, there was not enough lift and shipping capacity to move product just in time... the solution: this ship. Better for the rest of us now, with some walmart freight off the ships, rates lower for the rest of us....
Finally, USA still buys more from canada than china. 
Guardian, UK
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