Cargo Ships – America’s old jobs floating at sea

By: Dr. Glenn Mollette

Cargo ships waiting to unload at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach California could keep some of America’s store shelves bare for a while. These two ports handle the bulk of cargo coming from China. Cargo keeps coming from China, making the congestion craziness only worse. The dozens of ships floating in the pacific are carrying products that used to be some of America’s good paying jobs.

Today, about 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is transported by container. Modern container ships carry over 21,000 TEUs and rival crude oil tankers as the largest commercial vessels on the ocean. A TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) is a measure of volume in units of twenty-foot-long containers. If you have ever seen any of these cargo ships come into the port at Savannah, Georgia, or these California ports then you know its mind blowing the amount of cargo stacked and transported across the ocean. The weight of the cargo is estimated between 15,000 to 18,000 tons on most of the ships.

See more in this weeks Boone County Journal