Feeder Shipping

The Realization of America's Marine Highway

Feeder ships are common throughout the world in virtually all regions and on every continent except North America, where there is container on barge feeder service operating on limited routes in the Northeast-Mid Atlantic region. Feeder service has become an established operation over the last 30 years elsewhere in the global marketplace.

In 1980, worldwide feeder volume was approximately 2,200,000 TEUs or six percent of the total combined market. By 1990, feeder volumes were constantly above ten percent of a growing total market. By 2006, the world transshipment market was about 115,000,000 TEUs or 26 percent of the world’s TEU total throughput of 487,800,000 TEUs.

Approximately 50 percent of the transshipment volume was feeder related volume. Accordingly, total 2006 worldwide short sea/feeder volume equaled approximately 57,500,000 TEUs. Feedering is deeply integrated into the deep sea container carrier networks in the competitive global marketplace.

The total U.S. feeder volume during the last several decades was and continues to be insignificant relative to the potential. AFL will address this shortcoming by providing capacity to shift more than one percent of total U.S. TEU shipments to the marine highway in a single marine highway project.