LINER TRADES

The liner trading is considered the backbone of the world trade. The vast majority of the whole world's exports of finished cargoes are normally transported by the liner shipping companies having fixed schedules featuring rigid regularity, which allows the manufacturers to rely on the service enabling the famous just-in-time working philosophy.

The highest efficiency and also relatively low costs of the maritime container shipping makes the transportation costs nearly incidental to the landed prices of the exported goods, and this is truth in the most cases and for most types of cargoes, i.e. everything that could fit in a standard shipping container. The liner shipping industry traditionally plays critically important role in the worldwide transportation of goods, it is always demanding, interesting and in most cases complicated noting the number of port pairs commonly fitted into a loading/discharge schedule. The volume opens with a section providing definition of the liner trading.

The main content of the book covers such important aspects of liner trading as types of liner ships and cargoes handled, management and organization of liner shipping, containerization, unitization and intermodalism, co-operation between different operators, consortia, alliances, consolidation in liner shipping, development of the service networks, cargo selection, pricing, as well as the finance and legal aspects.