This is part one of Visual Capitalist's The Shipping Industry: Plotting a Course for the Future, a two-part series for their sponsor Seaspan Corporation about the current state and future of global maritime trade.

A Bird's Eye View of Shipping

The shipping industry provides low-cost transportation options for a wide variety of goods and products, from raw materials to finished consumer products. Briefly, the process goes something like this:

Order received at overseas factory

Order placed in 20-foot container and transported to port

Cargo loaded onto a ship

Cargo crosses the ocean

Cargo arrives at destination

Cargo is offloaded

Cargo clears customs and makes its way to the customer

In 2022, nearly 11 billion tons of goods took a similar journey, according to data collected by the United Nations in their annual Review of Maritime Transport.

Now that we have some idea of how the process works, let's take a closer look at some of the pieces that keep world trade flowing, starting with the global shipping fleet.

From Tanker to Titan

The first thing to know about the fleet is that it's big. In 2022, it numbered 102,899 ships over 100 gross tons, including tankers, bulk transports, and containerships. And it's growing, and not just in sheer numbers. 

Containerships in particular have been steadily growing in size since a converted WWII T2 tanker made history in 1956 by strapping 58 containers to its deck, as ship owners chased greater economies of scale. Today's containerships can carry upwards of 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). 

Too Many Ships, Not Enough Cargo?

Ship-breaking on the other hand, the process of disassembling ships for parts and raw materials, has stalled.