Virtually everyone has heard about the large and seemingly never ending delays in shipping ocean containers from China to the US or Europe over the past year or more.

But just how bad things are for shippers and importers is nicely summarized in the graphic below, from an article on global supply chain woes from in the UK's The Economist earlier this week.

Source: The Economist

As can be seen, the average total cycle time as measured the number of days between cargo being taken to port of origin and its pickup from destination port in the the US and Europe is now almost 120 days, up from about 60 days at the start of 2020

What's worse, the delays are heading still higher. And those delays are a factor in the huge rise in ocean shipping rates since the pandemic, as assets are tied up for longer periods, effectively reducing shipping capacity.

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