The Dali tragedy: a huge ship smashing into the Patapsco River with hundreds of tonnes of cargo in Baltimore, U.S.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the global supply chain and US coastal infrastructure collided in the worst possible way. An enormous container ship, the Dali, slammed into a support of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, crumpling its central span into the Patapsco River and cutting off the city’s port from the Atlantic Ocean. Rescuers called off their search for six people who are presumed dead at 7:30 pm Tuesday.

Second, in order to speed up the process of processing a vehicle at a Baltimore facility, it’s a good idea to take them from a ship at a different port to the facility.

The shipping picture will get more complicated as the disaster continues. Changes to the route and destinations of ships can add a lot of time to a journey. If a ship is hauling a bunch of different cargoes for a bunch of different industries, a holdup along the way causes a lot of people to be screaming for their supplies.

A supply chain management expert at Northeastern University says everybody is saying it will be fine. It isn’t going to be fine if this lasts a while. It’s going to impact prices.”

The destruction of the bridge also underlines that boats are getting bigger. Trade transport volume across the seas has tripled in the past three decades. The ballooning shipping industry is reflected in the Dali, which is nearly 1,000 feet long.

Simple economics tells us that boats grow because the more goods you can cram onto a ship, the more you save on costs. Zal Phiroz is a supply chain analyst at UC San Diego. “This has been impacted to a great degree by Covid, and after Covid as well. The prices of containers went up a lot. Everything just went through the roof.”

Tradepoint Atlantic and Baltimore, the city where the Francis Scott Key Bridge was struck by a ship: a “contingency plan”

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge was struck by a cargo ship and collapsed, it was a shocking disaster that took the lives of six men working on the bridge at the time, four of whom are presumed dead.

They emphasized that they were adapting. GM says it is rerouting deliveries. The plans are called “contingency plans.” Mercedes says it has options. Mazda hasn’t made alternatives to this “vital” port. It’s not easy.

It’s more complicated to re-routing an imported vehicle than it is to redirecting a shipping container. Not all ports are equally equipped to unload the vessels that carry vehicles — a special “roll-on roll-off,” or ro-ro ship.

That all happens at a port facility that’s typically built right next to where the ships unload, and it’s a big reason why the vessels can’t be sent just anywhere — even if you can get them off the ship at another port, who’s going to install the subwoofers and finalize the window sticker?

The Tradepoint Atlantic terminal is located at the mouth of the harbor, before the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Volkswagen and BMW operate there, and as a result, those two automakers expect no impacts from the disaster. On Wednesday, a ship with Volkswagens arrived and was able to dock like normal.

Tradepoint Atlantic says it’s well equipped to handle more vehicle cargo. Plans to accept redirected cargo are underway, including the ability to handle the increased capacity.”

“Our thoughts are with all of those impacted by this collapse,” Bethann Rooney, port director, said in a statement, adding that the port “is proactively working with our industry partners to respond as needed and ensure supply chain continuity along the East Coast.”

The loss of a bridge in Baltimore will have an effect on the city. They would allow at least some port jobs to continue, boosting the local economy, while the waterways are blocked.

The port of Baltimore is the busiest for cars after Georgia, which is where the second busiest port is in Brunswick.

Officials at Brunswick say that the port has been contacted by companies as an interim solution while the Baltimore port is partially blocked, and that the port has unused capacity to process another 200,000 vehicles per year.