Empty container repositioning is the movement of unloaded shipping containers from places where they accumulate to places where shippers need them for new cargo. Ocean carriers, container lessors and the trucking and rail firms that work for them carry out these moves by sea, rail and road. The work earns no freight revenue, yet it is unavoidable: a box that sits empty in the wrong country cannot be loaded with an export somewhere else.
The problem exists because world trade does not balance by direction. A region with a large trade surplus in manufactured goods ships out far more full boxes than it receives, while a region with a trade deficit collects them. Repositioning is closely linked to, but different from, the headhaul and backhaul pattern of shipping lanes: the backhaul is the lightly loaded return leg, and repositioning is the cost of moving the boxes that leg cannot fill.
Empty container repositioning in plain terms
Picture a bike-share scheme in a hilly city. Riders happily cycle downhill to the centre in the morning, but few pedal back up. By lunchtime the downtown racks overflow and the hilltop racks are empty, so the operator sends a van to carry bikes back uphill. Nobody pays for that van ride, but without it the scheme stops working.
Shipping containers behave the same way. Factories in one part of the world fill them with goods and send them to shoppers in another. Once unpacked, many of those boxes have nothing to carry home, so the shipping line pays to move them back empty, just as the bike operator pays for the van.
Causes of empty container build-up
Trade imbalance is the main cause. On the main east–west routes, Asia exports far more containerised goods to North America and Europe than it imports from them, so boxes drift towards consuming countries. Several other factors add to the imbalance:
- Cargo type. Some exports, such as grain, scrap or timber, can travel in containers but often move in bulk ships instead, leaving boxes unused in agricultural regions.
- Equipment mismatch. A region may hold plenty of 20-foot boxes while exporters need 40-foot or refrigerated units, so even balanced volumes in TEU can require moves.
- Inland geography. Containers are unpacked at warehouses far from the coast and must be trucked or railed back to a port or depot before they can be reused.
- Demand shocks. During the 2021–2022 congestion, measured by indicators such as the Global Supply Chain Stress Index, boxes were stranded in North American ports while Asian exporters ran short.
Cost formula and example
A carrier can estimate the cost of a repositioning programme by adding up each step of the empty move:
- is the total repositioning cost.
- is the number of empty containers moved.
- and are the handling charges per box at the origin and destination terminals.
- is the sea, rail or truck cost of carrying one empty box.
- is the storage cost per box while it waits at a depot.
Suppose a line returns 2,000 empty boxes from the US West Coast to China, with handling of $90 at each end, a slot cost of $250 per box and $40 of depot storage. The cost per box is , so the programme costs , or $940,000, with no freight earned. In a full voyage analysis that figure is charged against the paying headhaul cargo, which is why it matters to unit economics on each lane.
Scale of the problem
Empty boxes are a large share of port traffic. Drewry, the maritime research firm, reported that in 2011 about 20.6 percent of all containers handled at ports worldwide, roughly 122 million TEU, were empty. Cost estimates vary with method and with whether land moves are counted: Boston Consulting Group put the industry bill at about $15 billion to $20 billion a year, equal to up to 8 percent of a carrier's operating costs, and Drewry has published estimates of a similar order. Because the cost is absorbed into ocean rates, shippers on the busy headhaul ultimately pay much of it, while backhaul exporters often enjoy cheap rates as carriers try to fill boxes that would otherwise sail empty.
Repositioning also adds handling fees, port congestion and fuel burn. Empty boxes that wait too long inside a terminal raise dwell time and can trigger demurrage charges for whoever controls them.
Ways to reduce repositioning
The industry uses several tools, alone or together, to cut empty moves:
- Street turns. A street turn sends an emptied import box straight to a nearby exporter instead of back to the port, saving two empty truck trips.
- Pooling and leasing. Container leasing companies and shared pools let several carriers draw on one stock of boxes, so a line can return a unit where demand is weak and pick one up where it is strong.
- Pricing. Carriers cut backhaul rates to attract any paying cargo, and freight forwarders consolidate small exporters to fill boxes on weak legs.
- Equipment design. Foldable containers, which collapse so that several fit in one slot, have been trialled for decades but remain niche because of higher purchase and handling costs.
- Data sharing. Tracking systems and online exchanges match available empties with nearby bookings, an extension of the economies of scale that containerization already brought.
None of these tools removes the root cause. As long as some economies export far more manufactured goods than they import, a share of the world's boxes will travel back empty, and the paperwork for each loaded leg, starting with the bill of lading, will carry part of the cost.