It's mind boggling to wrap your head around the sheer scale of modern shipping and logistics. I've seen visualizations before, but does anyone recommend any tools to visualize these shipping routes? Makes me want to fire up Factorio again.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/
Then imagine how many containers fit on a typical vessel.
Obviously not all the icons there are carrying containers but I still find it awe inspiring seeing the sheer amount of traffic moving at any one time.
given your domain knowledge, could you clarify that aspect pls?
One very interesting aspect of ship operations is the art of stowage of containers. The complexity associated with it is substantial. 3D large scale Tetris. This is a good introductory article https://www.shippingandfreightresource.com/container-stowage...
The average container ship can carry anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 TEU, with the newer VLCS and ULCS ships carrying up to 25,000 TEU.
That’s 5-25,000 containers on a single ship, and there’s estimated to be around 20,000 container ships currently operating.
Global container trade is somewhere near 1 Billion TEU per year currently.
All of that is ignoring Bulk Cargo such as oil/liquid tankers, dry goods (grains and ores, etc), and other non-containerised goods.
Every single number in this industry is mind boggling.
Just for clarity the standard shipping container we’re all familiar with visually is 40 feet long, and is two TEU’s.
Now that I think of it, maybe 1 billion TEU is not that much. Single person does not even use full container...