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The oldest ship on the loop
Average vessel age on main-lane services is falling, but the average hides a tail of ships that carriers keep because they are cheap to hold and useful to sail.
Last month I found a 24-year-old container ship on an Asia to North Europe rotation, sailing in the third slot of a weekly service from Ningbo to Hamburg. It was built in 2002, rated at 8,400 TEU, and has had four names. Its presence tells you something about how carriers manage the end of a cycle, and it is one of the better reasons to look at vessel age in the schedule data.
A gas tanker turns ahead of a container ship at Rotterdam, January 2006. Photo: Alf van Beem, CC0.
Average age figures are published by classification societies and often quoted in carrier presentations. The number on main lanes has been falling for six years, now sitting at 11.2 years. A fleet with a falling average sounds like a fleet that is renewing itself. It is, but averages hide a distribution, and the distribution tells a different story.
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