Op-Ed: The case for pressure testing ocean freight strategy amid heightened volatility

Paul Brinkman

When the freight market is calm, logistics strategies can appear more stable than they truly are. 

Capacity is plentiful. Rates are somewhat predictable. Shipments move mostly as planned. But that’s not today’s operating reality. The current Middle East conflict has escalated ocean freight’s volatility, putting upward pressure on freight rates, fuel prices, and overall container costs. 

As steamship lines divert vessels and manage longer transit times, pay multi-year-high fuel prices, and navigate slowing consumer demand, they’re passing costs directly to shippers. 

A case in point: Maersk reported in May that its monthly fuel bill doubled to $500 million since the conflict’s February start. Now, its customers are footing the bill via surcharges and revised bunker formulas. It’s happening industrywide. But how long can customers absorb the costs? 

The answer lies in pressure testing now, before these added costs become your new baseline.

Find Your Weak Spots Before the Market Does

A pressure test won’t predict the next disruption, but it can help you spot where your supply chain is vulnerable before the market exposes your weaknesses. And right now, that matters. 

Freight volatility is holding. And supply chains are once again experiencing what looks like a peak season, albeit an artificial one. It happened last year, too, when cargo was frontloaded ahead of tariff changes. Now, it’s driven by a rush to beat the next Bunker Adjustment Factor. 

Carriers know how to manage these moments. Blank sailings (that is, bypassing a stop or canceling a trip entirely) and tighter capacity management create a higher floor for rates, even when demand doesn’t fully justify them. It means shippers need to understand their pain points, options, and how quickly they can respond when their costs rise or service metrics start to slip.

Before the next disruption hits, every shipper should be able to answer:

• What happens if a shipment misses its intended sailing?
• How quickly can your team identify a delay in transit?
• Who on your team owns communication when freight issues arise?
• Do you have contracted alternative routing or provider options available?
• How much would a prolonged capacity crunch cost us? In dollars and reputation?  
• How will we manage if fuel, freight, and container costs keep rising?

Visibility that Goes Beyond Milestone Updates 

Visibility shouldn’t be limited to seeing when cargo leaves an origin and when it arrives at a destination. That’s just the basics. Truly clear visibility comes down to understanding what’s happening between points A and B with enough detail and data to make better decisions. 

It starts at the purchase order level. Can your supplier receive a PO, push it into your ERP, and carry that data through your forwarder or carrier system without issue? Do you receive real-time milestone updates along the way, from gate-in to discharge, that allow you to identify delays? And once a shipment reaches port, do you have visibility through customs and final delivery? 

Cargo may be visible in one system while on the water, then disappear once it moves through drayage, customs, and inland transportation. If your team has to jump between platforms or wait on manual updates, your supply chain will stumble. The goal here isn’t tracking for tracking’s sake. It’s establishing breadcrumb-like visibility throughout the journey to help your team adjust and reroute shipments before inventory, production, or customer promises are impacted.

Communication that Doesn’t Break at Handoffs

Supply chains usually break down at transfer points. A shipment may move easily from supplier to forwarder and ocean carrier with clear reporting, but if communication falters once reaching port, your team is left reacting, not planning. Your partners know how to move freight, but ultimately it’s up to shippers to determine if they know how to move information along with it. 

Find out by asking: How will information flow between you and your partner? Is it automated? Trackable? Are there escalation procedures in place? And a clear SOP for handling exceptions? Can delays be communicated in minutes, not hours or days? Is documentation centralized and accessible when your team needs it? If the answer to any is no, you risk a communication collapse, which inevitably leads to more surprises, slower response times, and avoidable costs.

Reliability that Holds Under High Pressure

When markets tighten, service performance matters just as much as price. Often more. And while a carrier or forwarder partner may function well under stable conditions, you need to know how they perform when pressures run high. This is where your risk evaluation expands beyond costs and transit times, and where your partners’ reliability becomes non-negotiable. 

Shippers need to think about physical theft, digital fraud, regulatory compliance, and other security risks. You also need to evaluate your provider’s historical service performance, current capacity commitments, and disruption contingency plans. You need to be aware of service failures and how contract language can quietly shift costs back to you. Each of these reliability factors and risk exposures deserves just as much attention as your rate negotiations. 

Turning Market Volatility into Resiliency 

The point of pressure testing isn’t to outright eliminate volatility. That’ll never happen. Ocean freight will always face industry-shifting disruptions, rate swings, and capacity constraints. The goal here is to spot your weak areas while you still have time to act. 

In the end, the most resilient shippers aren’t the ones avoiding every problem. They’re the ones that know where, and which, problems cause the most harm and have a response ready.

Paul Brinkman is president of Trans-Solutions Consulting, a transportation spend management and logistics consulting firm that helps mid-market and enterprise shippers improve visibility into freight costs, identify savings opportunities, and optimize transportation performance. With more than 15 years of experience in logistics and supply chain consulting, Paul specializes in transportation spend analysis, carrier contract optimization, freight audit and recovery, and cost reduction strategies.