Ocean Freight Risk: Late Is Now the Likely Outcome

Ocean freight risk is rising, and on some Asia–North America lanes, late delivery is now the most likely outcome. Matt Anderson breaks down why carrier selection matters more than lane selection right now — and how that decision can drive downstream trucking and spot exposure. This conversation covers the September ocean freight risk outlook, service reliability by carrier, total landed cost, and what shippers should do ahead of peak season across ocean, drayage, truckload and intermodal. #OceanFreight #SupplyChainRisk #FreightWaves

Degrading execution and reliability — not capacity — is the defining risk in ocean freight right now, particularly on the Asia-to-North America trade lane, according to WiseTech’s newly launched Ocean Freight Risk Outlook. The report, which incorporates September data, finds that on some lanes, a late delivery is now the most likely outcome, not the exception.

“The transit times look okay, but the on-time delivery variance is really, really blown out,” said the leader of global strategic account management at e2open, a WiseTech Global Group Company, who previously led managed transportation at e2open. “There’s some lanes that — being late is now the most likely case, not the exception.” The outlook also flags Asia-to-Europe as a high-risk corridor, while Europe-to-North America remains comparatively low risk.

“Who you book with is right now a greater predictor of a good outcome than maybe the lane you’re moving on.”

That finding has direct implications for shipper procurement strategy. The executive said carrier selection should be treated primarily as a reliability decision, not a rate decision, because the spread in on-time performance between carriers on the same lane is wide enough to materially affect how much domestic spot market exposure a shipper accumulates. A container arriving 30 days late, he said, is “probably the single highest impact” cost driver available for shippers to address.

On the domestic side, he argued routing guides need to be built in alignment with how ocean moves will actually be executed — accounting for potential surges, port-of-entry changes, and the risk of volume bunching when ocean schedules slip. Using multiple primary carriers to buffer capacity and real-time rating tools to handle overflow at market rates are among the steps he recommended. He acknowledged a bias toward transportation management software as the operational backbone for those plans.

The outlook is a product of WiseTech’s combined capabilities following multiple acquisitions. CargoWise, WiseTech’s freight forwarder platform, is used by a large share of the world’s freight forwarders, while e2open’s solutions are oriented toward the shipper side. The vice president, who now leads global strategic account management at WiseTech, said the combined view allows the company to connect decisions made at the ocean booking stage to their downstream cost consequences on the domestic leg — a total landed cost perspective he said procurement organizations are increasingly demanding.

On the peak season outlook, he said aggregate ocean capacity is not currently struggling to meet demand for the near-term, but cautioned that a tariff announcement or a significant weather event could quickly reshape that picture. He pointed to Hurricane Harvey as an example of how a regional disruption can misalign capacity without changing the aggregate number of assets in the network, stressing routing guides and pushing shippers to the spot market.

The Ocean Freight Risk Outlook is available on the WiseTech website. The executive encouraged shippers and forwarders to use it and similar tools to embed more market context into procurement and operations decisions rather than optimizing individual legs of a move in isolation.

• On-time delivery variance on Asia-North America lanes has deteriorated to the point where lateness is now the most probable outcome on some corridors, not an exception.
• Carrier selection is currently a stronger predictor of a good shipping outcome than lane choice, due to wide performance gaps between carriers on the same routes.
• WiseTech’s Ocean Freight Risk Outlook finds aggregate ocean capacity adequate for near-term demand, but warns that tariff changes or weather events could rapidly disrupt that balance.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.