Splash Ports — 2026-09-29
Land transportation
German port strike risk is a timely reminder that visibility alone does not create resilience. Alternative ports, sailings, handling and haulage only work if authority, capacity and cost have been agreed in advance, advises Wolfgang Lehmacher.
German port workers are voting on whether to back indefinite strikes after rejecting employers’ latest wage offer; ver.di’s ballot closes on 1 October 2026.
A forwarder can flag the risk to a customer. But if the proposed response requires a different port, a replacement sailing and onward haulage, who has accepted those bookings, authorised the extra spending and agreed to pay?
An alert can start that conversation. The useful work is to settle as many alternative options as possible before the potential disruption.
In 2025, a carrier cancelled a Shanghai-US West Coast sailing with about 72 hours’ notice, threatening a retailer’s promotional inventory, according to APL Logistics. Its OceanGuaranteed team reportedly rerouted the containers within 24 hours through Ningbo on another carrier, adding roughly 36 hours to transit but meeting the committed delivery date.
APL describes a service built on pre-purchased multi-carrier slots, advance roll protection, priority-loading agreements and pre-committed destination trucking. Software monitors milestones and raises alerts; APL’s operations team holds rerouting authority, with alternatives prepared beforehand.
The account illustrates the principle, not a universal performance guarantee: software should support an arrangement, not invite participants to invent one under pressure.
The obstacle need not be poor data or unwillingness to cooperate. A terminal might be able to provide extra handling, but why should it incur overtime to spare someone else a delay? The benefit sits in one company’s accounts; the cost lands in another’s. Refusal can be commercially rational.
Before the alert, partners should specify which alternatives may be authorised, who may approve additional expenditure and how the carrier and terminal accept the work. But even the permission to spend is not a confirmed booking. The response still needs space, feasible handling and the necessary permissions.
Advance agreements should also state what happens when an alternative is no longer available. A contract cannot create a slot on an overbooked ship, reopen a strike-bound terminal or override a safety constraint. The aim is to remove avoidable bargaining. An agreement cannot promise immunity from disruption.
Nor is contingency capacity free. We must weigh its cost against the losses it can realistically prevent. Extra work needs an agreed price or another agreed benefit; otherwise, the supposed efficiency is only somebody else’s uncovered cost.
Earlier information remains useful on its own. A forwarder may warn a customer or stop a truck heading for a wasted container collection. But where the investment case requires another company to commit costs, the agreement belongs in that investment case too.
The German ballot is a good reason to rethink and rehearse. Understand the available options and their implications. Take one exposed shipment and ask the decision-makers to decide which alternative they can accept, on what terms, and at what total cost. Measure the time from warning to acceptance, not just the accuracy of the alert.
Options untested are no available options. They are resilience on paper.
A failed rehearsal exposes the missing commitment before a shipper depends on it. If nobody has accepted the booking, the handling and the bill, an earlier warning has merely started the argument sooner.