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a video from 4 months ago, what it normally looks like to transit the canal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdU2cYRbnM

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At the end of the video he says that he estimates the transit toll for his ship to be around 200,000$. Wow!

One interesting thing is the toll often fluctuates due to the oil price.

If the toll is deemed to be too high a vessel always has the option of going around the Cape.

Realistically it's always an option but the added time plus the additional wear on a vessel makes it undesirable.

Some back-of-the-napkin calculations: The ship's got over 20k containers, so less than $10 per container. Shipping a container from Asia to Europe costs thousands of dollars, so passing through the canal is less than 1% of the cost. Sounds fair to me?

The ship in the video is not a container ship but a taker or bulk cargo ship, so you cannot calculate this way. But I am sure it is not much if you divide the toll fee by total shipping cost or even the value of the cargo. It was just the total sum that I found impressive.

Oh, good point - I mixed it up with Ever Given. Agreed $200k is a lot, but probably totally insignificant compared to the major costs (fuel, wear & tear).

Maintaining the channel seems to be a lot of work... like when ships crash into the bank and block it.

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