Since 2019, the most reliable of the top-13 global carriers in each month, has rarely been the most reliable carrier in more than 30% of the trade lanes, that they offered a product in. For context, we benchmark schedule reliability across 34 trade lanes in our GLP report.

How is it then possible for a carrier to be the most reliable overall, when they are not the most reliable in two-thirds of the trades they offer? The answer lies in consistency – these carriers were consistently in top-5 of most reliable global carriers in 50%-80% of the trade lanes. Essentially, if they weren’t 1^st, they were 2^nd or 3^rd, and more often than not, no lower than the 5^th most reliable on a given trade lane.

This is simple to understand on a monthly basis but becomes complicated if you want to calculate relative schedule reliability performance over a longer timeframe. Who is the better performer – a carrier that is 1^st in 50% of the trade lanes and 8^th in 50% over a 6-month period, or one that is never 1^st, but is 3^rd in 100% of the trade lanes over that same period?

To quantify this for Jan-Sep 2024, we developed a composite score. For each global carrier, we calculated the percentage of times they ranked 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc., on a trade lane. Every time they ranked 1^st, they were assigned a score of 1.0, every time they ranked 2^nd, they were assigned a score of 0.9, and so on, until a score of 0.1, which was assigned every time they ranked 10^th on a trade lane. These scores were then added up, with the result shown in Figure 1.

Maersk was at the top of the composite rankings, having ranked 1^st on a trade lane 16% of the time and within the top-3 44% of the time. ZIM followed, having been ranked 1^st 17% of the time and within the top-3 39% of the time. CMA CGM, MSC, and PIL rounded out the top-5, while ONE was at the bottom with the lowest composite score. ONE was ranked 1^st on a trade lane in only 2% of the time and was within the top-3 30% of the time.

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 All quotes can be attributed to: Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
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