2021 Shipping Movements

[Mr Miserable]

Not much to report today.

GLOVIS CAPTAIN continues to make steady progress towards Panama covering 390.6 nm in the last 24hrs. She is presently about 45 miles S of Puerto Vallarta, tracking about 30nm off the Mexican coast. The weather continues to pose no concerns. I’m expecting her to transit the Panama Canal in the early hours of 25 Jan and arrive in Zeebrugge around 6 Feb.
As always, this is a gentle reminder to enter the GLOVIS CAPTAIN competition, click HERE to enter.

I would like to say a big thank you to those of you who were sympathetic to my pitiful begging yesterday and chose a square. Remarkably, only one square has been chosen by 2 people so far - which is why it pays to enter early! There are still loads of possible winning squares available including the one that I would have chosen based on my position logs of last year’s Tesla ships. I suppose however that past performance etc etc...

RCC AMSTERDAM departed yesterday evening to Taiwan. I suspect that is just the first stop of several ports in the Far East which will likely include Shanghai.

HORIZON LEADER will be the next ship to Europe and she remains on schedule to arrive at Pier 80 by Friday. I have her pencilled in to arrive in Zeebrugge around 16 Feb.

 

[Mr Miserable]

HORIZON LEADER is about to depart Hueneme (just north of Los Angeles) enroute to Benicia where she is due to arrive at 0100 on Friday morning.
For those unfamiliar with the area, Benicia is a port within the San Francisco Bay area and is a frequent final stop for vessels before commencing their Tesla charter at Pier 80.

 

[Davids2885]

I took delivery of my M3 LR in December having ordered it in August 2020. This thread was the only source of information regarding Tesla deliveries until I was matched two days after the ship had left Pier 80. Those of you who are waiting for your car will find this thread a source of information and education. Mr. Miserable uses his considerable experience and expertise to make following these Tesla ships a fascinating experience. I am still following the thread and entering the competitions even after I have my car as I find it almost addictive.
As you wait for your car ,follow this thread and it will make the wait much easier and the car is certainly worth the wait.

 

[Mr Miserable]

GLOVIS CAPTAIN continues to make steady progress at just over 16kts towards Panama. She is presently about 130 miles SE of Acapulco and bang on schedule to arrive at the entrance to the Canal on Sunday evening.
The weather continues to pose no concerns although later today she will pass through a small area with stronger winds and 3m high waves. This area is subject to a wind known as the Tehuantepecer Wind which is easily visible in this Ventusky animation of current conditions. It’s not bad at the moment and will not pose a problem for GLOVIS CAPTAIN unlike the horrendous conditions endured by TRITON ACE when she blundered through the area in November last year.
I’m still expecting her to transit the Panama Canal in the early hours of 25 Jan and arrive in Zeebrugge around 6 Feb.

In case it slipped your mind to enter the free GLOVIS CAPTAIN competition, click HERE to enter. The prize for winning this competition is sadly not supplied by Rolex (or anybody else for that matter) - it’s just bit of fun!

HORIZON LEADER is slowly making her way to Benicia to unload her GM cargo. (If Tesla logistics run like clockwork then GM’s are akin to a Swiss chronometer) She will arrive there around 0100 local tomorrow and once empty she will reposition to Pier 80 by midnight in readiness to commence loading on Saturday morning.
I don’t have a departure date for her yet however for the moment I have pencilled her in to arrive in Zeebrugge around 16 Feb.

SEBRING EXPRESS is due to load on 27 Jan but I am expecting her to be destined to the Far East.

 

[Mr Miserable]

Shipping containers in various guises have been around since the 1800’s but it was an American trucker called Malcolm McLean that devised in the mid 1950’s the modern intermodal container - a container that could be loaded quickly and securely onto ships, onto railcars and onto road trailers. Its effect was to greatly reduce transportation costs and to significantly increase the speed of transporting goods. To facilitate the container, ships were initially modified, then redesigned and finally purpose built to transport as many containers as possible within constraints of cost and ship size.

Containerisation affected ports too. San Francisco was a big bustling port (Teslas are shipped from Pier 80) but there wasn’t room to park the thousands of containers and so it quickly went into decline and instead, across the other side of the San Francisco Bay, the new port of Oakland with its big cranes, rail yard and acres of land given over to holding stacks of containers, quickly became the cargo hub of the US west coast. Tesla Model S and X are shipped from here to Europe by rail and to Australia and New Zealand by ship in standard 40’ containers.

Every year it is estimated that of the 220 million containers that are transported globally by ship about 1,300 are lost overboard. In percentage terms it’s tiny and barely worth considering (0.00006%) So insuring them is not a bad business to be in. Many of those container losses are due to major accidents when a ship sinks but hundreds are lost in individual ‘minor’ incidents when a ship loses one or two containers overboard often in bad weather. The numbers suggest then that it’s a frequent occurrence. Indeed, readers of the Daily Mail will recognise the regular story of rubber ducks, Nike trainers and Lego being washed up on our shores from containers that have been lost at sea. Anyone who has ever shipped anything by container will have been offered the opportunity buy extra insurance specifically to cover the loss of the container overboard and so for the insurance industry at least, container losses provide lucrative business.

The trouble with losing a container overboard is not just it’s loss and the commercial loss of it’s contents. The containers often do not sink and can float around being a major safety hazard to shipping. Even more dangerous are containers that partially sink or float just beneath the surface. These subsurface containers are every yachtsman’s greatest fear since hitting one of these invisible objects can easily rip the keel off and capsize their boat in an instant. In Dec 20 one of the yachts taking part in the Vendee Globe round the world yacht race had to retire after hitting an unknown underwater object. She was very lucky that her keel remained attached.

However just last month a ship called ONE APUS lost no less than 1,900 containers overboard in one go during a storm 1600nm NW of Hawaii. Of those 1,900 containers 64 of them (so far) have been classified as carrying dangerous cargo. The environmental cost is still to be determined but is unlikely to be addressed.

In 1912 the passenger shipping industry was given a wake-up call as a result of the sinking of the TITANIC and as a result the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea came into being in 1914 which set new standards of safety. This convention has been subject to continuous amendment and improvement over the years. The tragic disaster also led to the foundation of the International Ice Patrol which even now monitor and report on icebergs in the busy North Atlantic and the convention of a continual monitoring of a radio by ships at sea to listen for distress calls.

The ONE APUS incident needs to become the impetus for the international shipping industry to take the issue of container losses at sea much more seriously and to solve the problem once and for all. The problem hasn’t been entirely ignored but regulations concerning the weight and balance of containers, their packing and lashing are slowly being tweaked. The mandatory reporting of the loss of a container at sea would also highlight the true scale of the problem and may also help in locating them before they become a hazard.

The elephant in the room which remains unaddressed is the poor construction of some containers which can cause them to collapse when stacked. It’s time that nettle was firmly grasped and in the absence of international agreement, the shipping lines/ports need to take the lead by being satisfied that each container they handle has a proven construction pedigree.

At the moment there is a global container shortage which is pushing up transport costs by at least 20%. The shortage is particularly acute in the Far East and the fear is that more dodgy containers of unknown pedigree will find their way on to ships and cause future calamities.

 

[jbcarioca]

Shipping containers in various guises have been around since the 1800’s but it was an American trucker called Malcolm McLean that devised in the mid 1950’s the modern intermodal container - a container that could be loaded quickly and securely onto ships, onto railcars and onto road trailers. ...

Since slight off-topic posts about shipping seem permissible...
In the early 1980's I was Director of the Transportation Industry center at SRI International (was Stanford Research Institute). By the McLean had evolved from a large US trucking company since the 1956 invention of standard containers. His Sea-Land had evolved due to the growth of cheap B747 and DC-10 used freighters so a smaller standard container evolved too. We at SRI were commissioned to help fix the multi-modal logistics nightmare, not least because of the worldwide container market. Our IT mavens then helped build separate but compatible systems to coordinate the air, sea, rail, truck components plus the single most difficult part, the insanely, bizarrely convoluted container building, owning, tracking and QC process. I had a large number of nightmares.

In 1984 there were giant rooms of computers integrated with many differing smaller computers. Luckily for all, a magical thing called TCP/IP, which SRI people used every day with ARPANET that had adopted TCP/IP a year earlier. A few years later came to WWW and then it all become much simpler. Soon multimodal transport became routine. and a few years later Sea-Land disappeared into Maersk. 1999, I think.

Since then it has all become vastly more complex with everything from PowerPacks, COVID-19 vaccines, almost countless product hazards etc. Still, container management is the hope for Nirvana, but is an elusive target. More and more products are being designed as 'containers' themselves, such as PowerPack. specialized containers are now routine for things such as Models S and X destined for Europe via Tilburg.

Tesla is clearly learning quickly, but their logistics as @Mr Miserable just said, are not yet anywhere near chronometer-like. I'll wager they will be by the time Brandenburg and Austin open. Chinese expertise will enable Shanghai-Brandenburg rail, sea and air coordination and their advances will enable serious improvements for Austin/Sparks while helping rationalize the vastly complex San Francisco Bay facilities. Of course Buffalo will be vastly improved as other production facilities begin for Superchargers and TE products.

Sorry for this ancient history. I could not resist. I won't be offended if any mod thinks it wise to delete it. OTOH, logistics management is one major key to resolving quality control and cost problems. TSLA needs to learn for AMZN, currently the world leader in logistics IMHO.

 

[Mr Miserable]

Since slight off-topic posts about shipping seem permissible...
In the early 1980's I was Director of the Transportation Industry center at SRI International (was Stanford Research Institute). By the McLean had evolved from a large US trucking company since the 1956 invention of standard containers. His Sea-Land had evolved due to the growth of cheap B747 and DC-10 used freighters so a smaller standard container evolved too. We at SRI were commissioned to help fix the multi-modal logistics nightmare, not least because of the worldwide container market. Our IT mavens then helped build separate but compatible systems to coordinate the air, sea, rail, truck components plus the single most difficult part, the insanely, bizarrely convoluted container building, owning, tracking and QC process. I had a large number of nightmares.

In 1984 there were giant rooms of computers integrated with many differing smaller computers. Luckily for all, a magical thing called TCP/IP, which SRI people used every day with ARPANET that had adopted TCP/IP a year earlier. A few years later came to WWW and then it all become much simpler. Soon multimodal transport became routine. and a few years later Sea-Land disappeared into Maersk. 1999, I think.

Since then it has all become vastly more complex with everything from PowerPacks, COVID-19 vaccines, almost countless product hazards etc. Still, container management is the hope for Nirvana, but is an elusive target. More and more products are being designed as 'containers' themselves, such as PowerPack. specialized containers are now routine for things such as Models S and X destined for Europe via Tilburg.

Tesla is clearly learning quickly, but their logistics as @Mr Miserable just said, are not yet anywhere near chronometer-like. I'll wager they will be by the time Brandenburg and Austin open. Chinese expertise will enable Shanghai-Brandenburg rail, sea and air coordination and their advances will enable serious improvements for Austin/Sparks while helping rationalize the vastly complex San Francisco Bay facilities. Of course Buffalo will be vastly improved as other production facilities begin for Superchargers and TE products.

Sorry for this ancient history. I could not resist. I won't be offended if any mod thinks it wise to delete it. OTOH, logistics management is one major key to resolving quality control and cost problems. TSLA needs to learn for AMZN, currently the world leader in logistics IMHO.

Thanks JB.
Of course good logistics are the key on the raw material supply also. Failures of 'just in time' logistics have brought a couple of the big players' production lines to a standstill recently and the current chip shortage looks like it's hitting all the big boys.
Anyone know whether Tesla are affected?

 

[jbcarioca]

Thanks JB.
Of course good logistics are the key on the raw material supply also. Failures of 'just in time' logistics have brought a couple of the big players' production lines to a standstill recently and the current chip shortage looks like it's hitting all the big boys.
Anyone know whether Tesla are affected?

So far it seems not. Tesla had, I think, a quite conservative view of supply chain dating from 2008, first because they had serious problems attracting suppliers, then with Model S because many components were directly from the Mercedes Benz S class. That included switch gear, both a/c systems, almost all suspension parts, etc. The MB suppliers did not want to deal with Tesla but Daimler was insistent. That made Tesla need quite big inventories. Over time that situation has dramatically reversed, but Tesla kept conservative. Everything chip and electronic is very mature for Tesla and now suppliers seem to rank them above nearly everyone else.

All my information is second and third hand. I think it is fairly accurate but still, I do not have any direct information.

 

[howardoark]

Hi Mr. Miserable

I noticed that the available Tesla inventory in the EU went up after the Glovis Captain left SF ( https://ev-tsla.com/hunter/index.php ). The inventory has been going down since, but I don't see much in the way of registrations in Norway ( eu-evs.com )- do you know if unsold cars on the boats from SF get added to inventory when the boat sails?

Thanks

 

[Mr Miserable]

Hi Mr. Miserable

I noticed that the available Tesla inventory in the EU went up after the Glovis Captain left SF ( https://ev-tsla.com/hunter/index.php ). The inventory has been going down since, but I don't see much in the way of registrations in Norway ( eu-evs.com )- do you know if unsold cars on the boats from SF get added to inventory when the boat sails?

Thanks

Sorry I don't know, however many buyers have noted here that they become 'matched' shortly after each ship departs.

 

[Mr Miserable]

With the latest satellite imagery of Pier 80 you can see comparison photos of when GLOVIS CAPTAIN and RCC AMSTERDAM were alongside.
Since RCC AMSTERDAM didn't load to full, we can conclude that HORIZON LEADER will be met with a Pier 80 that will be filled to close to capacity. The port agents will want to start loading as soon as possible.

 

[Mr Miserable]

GLOVIS CAPTAIN is maintaining a steady 16kts towards Panama covering 390nm in the last 24 hrs. She has finally left the coast of Mexico behind and is now about 160 miles W of Guatemala and is still on schedule to arrive at the entrance to the Canal on Sunday evening. The weather continues to pose no concerns.
I’m still expecting her to transit the Panama Canal in the early hours of Monday and arrive in Zeebrugge around 6 Feb.
I will post information on the Panama Canal and links to the webcams etc on Sunday.

Did you forget to enter the free GLOVIS CAPTAIN competition? Click HERE to enter.
The competition will close as soon as the ship enters the Panama Canal.

HORIZON LEADER has just arrived in Benicia and will start unloading shortly after dawn.
The plan remains for her to reposition to Pier 80 just before midnight tonight (local) in readiness to commence loading as soon as possible.
I don’t have a departure date for her yet however I’d be surprised if she left before Monday night and it’s most likely to be Tuesday before she is fully loaded.
In the meantime I have pencilled her in to arrive in Zeebrugge around 16 Feb.

SEBRING EXPRESS is due to load next Wednesday but I am expecting her to be destined to the Far East.

 

[howardoark]

thank you

 

[403 Forbidden]

So I've just been matched to a MIC M3 SR+. Do we know of any ships currently out there that support a February Delivery to Ireland?

 

[Mr Miserable]

So I've just been matched to a MIC M3 SR+. Do we know of any ships currently out there that support a February Delivery to Ireland?

Nope.... but the hunt is on!

UPDATE: My guess is GLOVIS CENTURY. She left Shanghai yesterday and is currently enroute to Singapore but she is heading for Europe and will arrive towards the back end of February.
I'll do a bit more digging before I go firm but at the moment she's looking pretty good.
Thanks for posting! A RHD MIC SR+ on its way!

 

[DGK-M3LR]

Nope.... but the hunt is on!

To add to that I've had a M3 LR matched with a MIC VIN. ETA from Tesla advisor was late Feb early march in UK.

 

[Mr Miserable]

To add to that I've had a M3 LR matched with a MIC VIN. ETA from Tesla advisor was late Feb early march in UK.

The GLOVIS CENTURY is due to arrive in Southampton on 16 February

 

[Bloody2k]

Well those comments for sure have made some excitement for this quarter. Can we except all UK deliveries from Shanghai, and only the three knowing from SF to EU?

And why would Toronto then have Zeebrugge as destination?

 

[DGK-M3LR]

The GLOVIS CENTURY is due to arrive in Southampton on 16 February

Cheers ! That's rather exciting I'll be keeping an eye on that as it goes.

 

[Mr Miserable]

So we could be looking at RHD cars on GLOVIS CENTURY and LHD on TORONTO.