CONTAINERLINE PERFORMANCE AND SERVICE QUALITY

The report drew heavily on the computer data banks of Lloyd's of London Press in order to assess the standards of most of the major deep-sea containerised services calling in the UK. The report sets out to assess what factors are the major determinants of shippers' choice of routeing in the containerisation ear. This was achieved by undertaking a program of interviews with a diverse selection of shippers and freight forwarders, and a series of discussions with some of the influential member lines of the major conferences serving the UK. With few exceptions the impression obtained by the interview program was that once freight rates are set, shippers are not too concerned about cost; rather they consider aspects of service quality of more importance. In the words of one shipper, "Service is always one degree ahead of cost". Once the decisions to follow a policy of shipping via conference members has been taken the shipper is still faced with the problem of carrier selection. The most important criteria appeared to be; Flexibility--in terms of a line's proved ability to circumvent disruptions. Who's going there first?--especially important for consumer-oriented shippers, fob shippers, and shippers with little warehousing space. Who gets there quickest?--fast transit is important, especially for cif shippers, and shippers of goods with seasonal demand. Reliability and regularity--production plans and time agreements are sometimes tailored to sailing schedules. The final part of the report sets out to examine the actual performance of container services to see how closely they relate to the expectations, and demands of the shippers. It achieves this by an analysis of the voyage records of each fully cellular container vessel serving UK ports in 1977. The voyage records, obtained from the computer files of Lloyd's of London Press, show the arrival and sailing dates at all ports and enable the capacities, frequencies, regularity, market shares, etc., on the various trade routes to be mapped out.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/5773411
• Corporate Authors:

  Lloyd's of London Press Limited

  Sheepen Road
  Colchester, Essex CO3 3LP,   England 
• Publication Date: 1980-9

Media Info

• Pagination: p. 25
• Serial:
  • Lloyd's Shipping Economist
  • Volume: 2
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Informa UK Limited
  • ISSN: 0144-6673

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Containerization; Containers; Liner shipping; Operations; Port operations; Service time; Shipping conferences; Studies; Trade routes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Port time
• Old TRIS Terms: Conference operations; Container operations; Trade route studies; Voyage time
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Marine Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00329802
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Apr 15 1981 12:00AM