Types of Liner services . Types of Liner services

the liner shipping The liner shipping which provides services in the transportation of final and semi-final products such as computers, manufacturing product and other consumption goods…etc. Cargo carried by liner shipping has come to be known as general cargo. Liner shipping is to provide regular services between specified ports according to time-tables and prices advertised well in advance.

. To list the various types, it can be stated as Independent Service Conference Service Consortia Service or Alliance Service

The most commonly known services offered by liners are as below: End to End Service Round The Word Service Pendulum Service Hub & Spoke Service

End to End Service The Liner Operator has a choice to select any one type of service option or combination of more than one type. One of the characteristics of the liner service is that the vessel sailed from the starting point to call on the various loading ports to the discharging ports and then to return over the same route to its starting point.

Round The Word Service This is an alternative to the end to end service. The ship never turns round, it just keeps sailing until it completes a circumnavigation and returns to its starting point i.e., the ship will not have to report the ports through which she has traveled for loading the cargo. Transatlantic, Transpacific and Far East To Europe route are the examples of such service. This type of services have declined in importance now day

Pendulum Service In its most ambitious form a pendulum service is a RTW service that omits the Panama Canal allowing the largest size of vessel to be used. It would operate from the Eastern Seaboard of USA (ECUS) via Europe to the Far East and vice versa. Compared with an RTW service it loses the ability to carry cargo between, for example, ECUS and and the Far East because its transit time is too long. Pendulum differs from End to End in that it combines two or more main trade routes.

Hub & Spoke Service It is a type of service that is offered between the hub port and the gateway port. The mainline ship will call at key ports (hubs) on its route. From these hubs, it will operate feeder services to other local areas and ‘spoke’ services to serve other accessible trade routes. This concept is used to allow east / west service vessels to link to north / south trades. Almost all deep sea container services today use the hub and spoke concept to some extent and the major players support their worldwide services by this method.

INDEPENDENT SERVICES Independent service provider is a one who does not get into any arrangements of consortium or alliance with other shipping line operators. He will be operating in a trade route having all necessary ingredients of a liner service. To be successful, the operator should not only offer good service to shippers but also a cheaper rate. In the last three decades, much bigger operators have challenged the conference and have successfully reassured the merchants of the seriousness of the independent lines’ endeavours. The emergence of independent operator coupled with changing attitude to business in general and shipping in particular, provided the impetus for the liberalization of liner shipping. This helped the shippers who wanted to negotiate the rates and terms with the independent operators those who have been controlled by the strict conference rules.

THE CONFERENCE SYSTEM Liner Conferences are groups or associations of ship owners, which agree to combine their operations on a given trade route, on conditions agreed by the members of the route. The term for such a grouping is a Cartel and the effect on the customer is basically that of being faced with a monopolistic situation. Although there are several distinct operators within the trade, there is no difference in the price and little difference in the nature of the service; thus the choice to the consumer is limited. Such a definition, were it left without any qualification or explanation would totally damn the whole concept of Liner Conferences. There is however, another side to the equation in terms of the benefits, which flow from the system some of which are intrinsic and others, which are judiciously included by the operators to counter adverse criticism.

CONSORTIA OR ALLIANCES The conference schemes or the mergers and takeover by the big shipping groups could NOT supply the required solution to the problems arisen out of container revolution. The high cost of new ships was one of the factors which influenced the move towards containers but container ships themselves with their 21/2 suits of boxes were much more expensive than the conventional ships they were supplanting and to this had to be added the cost of equipment ashore to handle the containers. So the problem of no one owner being able to supply a regular / frequent service by itself was made even greater. Part of the sales-talk convince shippers and consignees of the advantage of containers was the way that a steady steam of containers would enable buyers to have a dependable ‘pipeline’ and so keep their inventory of stock to a minimum.

……………. The lines had to provide a regular and frequent service, which they could sell as being geared to taking the goods from manufacturers ‘off the end of their production line’. Economy demanded the largest ship possible; frequency demanded several such ships but if there were several owners in the same trade, each of them ever fill such large ships was in question. This led to the scheme of consortia. The consortia arrangements were varying in nature and few of such consortia are as under: Shareholder Consortia Tonnage Pool Consortia