Since 2019, no single carrier among the top 13 global shipping companies has consistently ranked as the most reliable provider across more than 30% of the trade lanes they serve in any given month, according to Sea-Intelligence analysis.
In its GLP report, the Danish maritime data analysis company assessed schedule reliability across 34 global trade lanes and developed a composite score to quantify reliability for the first nine months of the year.
“How is it then possible for a carrier to be the most reliable overall when they are not the most reliable in two-thirds of the trades they offer?” wonders Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, before answering himself, “The answer lies in consistency – these carriers were consistently in the top 5 of most reliable global carriers in 50%-80% of the trade lanes.”
“Essentially, if they weren’t 1st, they were 2nd or 3rd, and more often than not, no lower than the 5th most reliable on a given trade lane,” explains Murphy.
He further added, “This is simple to understand on a monthly basis but becomes complicated if you want to calculate relative schedule reliability performance over a longer timeframe. Who is the better performer – a carrier that is 1st in 50% of the trade lanes and 8th in 50% over a 6-month period, or one that is never 1st, but is 3rd in 100% of the trade lanes over that same period?”
This composite score was calculated by ranking each carrier on individual trade lanes. For every 1st-place ranking, a carrier received a score of 1.0, for a 2nd place a score of 0.9, and so on, down to 0.1 for 10th place.
These scores were then totalled for each carrier, producing the final composite reliability ranking (shown in Figure 1).
Maersk led the composite ranking, achieving 1st place on trade lanes 16% of the time and placing within the top three 44% of the time. ZIM followed closely, ranking 1st 17% of the time and within the top three 39% of the time.
CMA CGM, MSC, and PIL completed the top five, while ONE ranked the lowest overall, achieving 1st place only 2% of the time and a top-three position 30% of the time.
