On September 11, 2020, near Veracruz, Mexico we drove our vehicle into a 20’container. We will see it again – or so we hope – around mid-November 2020 in Walvis Bay, Namibia. Some readers will wonder why this transport takes so long. And rightly so; we asked ourselves that too …

On the direct route there are around 13,000 kilometers between the two cities and continents. Today a container ship travels an average of thirty knots or around 50 km/h. Around 1,200 kilometers are covered in 24 hours. If you divide the distance by the speed, you get around 11 days for this trip. So how can it be that the container only arrives at its destination after seven weeks?

The explanation is simple: the container ship from Veracruz goes first to Europe, to Antwerp. There the container is reloaded onto another container ship, which ships to Walvis Bay via Lome (Togo). That results in a total distance of 24,000 km. With reloading and waiting times in the two ports, that adds up to a total of seven weeks.

PS. Sea transport is cheap; but not environmentally friendly: «The world fleet burns 370 million tons of fuel annually on the high seas, blowing 20 million tons of sulfur oxide and dangerous fine dust into the air». (Source Handelsblatt Germany)