Ocean Freight Rates Near Their Peak: Drewry's Index Hits $4,339 as Shanghai-New York Reaches $8,706

Container freight is holding near the top of its range as the third week of August 2026 closes. Drewry's World Container Index — the sector's most-quoted spot benchmark — rose 1% on 13 August to $4,339 per 40 ft container, roughly 74% above where it sat a year ago. The increase came entirely from the Transpacific: Asia-Europe went the other way.

The short version: the composite index stands at $4,339 per FEU. Shanghai-New York is $8,706 (+10% on the week), Shanghai-Los Angeles $6,244 (+6%), Shanghai-Genoa $5,080 (-8%) and Shanghai-Rotterdam $4,425 (-5%). Xeneta has Far East-US East Coast through $10,000 at $10,249 per FEU. Forty-nine sailings are cancelled through mid-September, and Hormuz transits remain about 70% below pre-war levels.

Where Rates Stand: Drewry, Freightos and Xeneta

Drewry's 13 August assessment describes a market that has stopped moving in one direction. Transpacific spot rates climbed — Shanghai-New York up 10% to $8,706, Shanghai-Los Angeles up 6% to $6,244 — while Asia-Europe retreated, with Shanghai-Genoa down 8% to $5,080 and Shanghai-Rotterdam down 5% to $4,425. Carriers published fresh FAK levels of $6,700-7,100 on Asia-Mediterranean from 15 August, and Drewry's own note questions whether softening demand will hold them. The agency expects rates to stay broadly stable next week and calls the East-West market volatile, shaped by security concerns around Suez and Hormuz, transit restrictions at Panama, port congestion across Asia after typhoon Dolphin, and low water on the Rhine.

Xeneta's data makes the divergence starker. Chief analyst Peter Sand recorded a week where US West Coast rates gained 14% and US East Coast 13% while Asia-Europe fell 5%; by 12 August the Far East-US East Coast average had passed the psychological $10,000 mark at $10,249 per FEU. Measured against the end of February — the last week before the Middle East conflict reshaped the map — Far East-US West Coast spot rates are up 271%. That single number is the fairest summary of what the year has done to ocean transport pricing.

What Is Pushing Rates Up

The dominant factor is the war in the Middle East and the resulting pressure on the Strait of Hormuz. UTIKAD, citing UNCTAD data, reports that traffic through Hormuz — around 130 commercial vessels a day before the war — collapsed after February 2026 and, even after the US-Iran understanding restored some movement, still runs roughly 70% below pre-war levels. Red Sea and Suez diversions compound it: a ship routed around the Cape of Good Hope adds 10 to 15 days to an Asia-Europe rotation, and every one of those days is capacity taken out of the water.

• Blank sailings. Drewry's Cancelled Sailings Tracker counts 49 cancelled departures across the major East-West trades between week 34 (17-23 August) and week 38 (14-20 September) — a 7% cancellation rate, with 59% of it on the Transpacific eastbound, 27% on Asia-North Europe/Med and 14% on the Transatlantic.
• Surcharge stacking. Carriers are layering general rate increases, peak-season surcharges and equipment-imbalance fees, with bunker adjustments and emergency fuel surcharges announced from August 2026 on renewed Hormuz risk.
• Congestion and inland constraints. Asian port congestion after typhoon Dolphin, Panama Canal transit restrictions and low water on the Rhine each remove usable capacity at a different point in the chain.
• Demand-side pull. Retail build-up around the 2026 FIFA World Cup — hosted in the US, Canada and Mexico from 11 June to 19 July — fed Transpacific volumes; MSC brought back its Transpacific Pearl service, withdrawn in mid-2025, on the strength of it.
• Tariff uncertainty. US Section 122 general tariffs and Section 232 steel and aluminium duties keep buyers guessing on timing, which pushes orders into bursts rather than a smooth flow.

This is why a shipper's invoice and the published index rarely agree. The index is the base; general rate increases, peak-season surcharges, equipment-imbalance fees and fuel adjustments are applied above it under standard carrier terms. Two quotes that look identical at the index level can differ by a four-figure sum per box once the surcharge sheet is attached — which is why the comparison worth doing is landed cost, not rate.

Tankers, Dry Bulk and Air Cargo

Container is not where the records are being set. On the tanker side, Argus Media data reported by the Financial Times put crude freight from the Gulf to Asia at $15.22 a barrel in mid-August — the highest since Argus began assessing the route in 2005, driven by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. John Ollett, Argus's head of European freight pricing, called it the largest disruption to the shipping market on record, overshadowing even the Covid pandemic. Reuters reported on 13 August that India's Reliance Industries chartered a VLCC at $23-25 million to lift two million barrels of Basrah crude at Worldscale 1,200 — about twelve times the benchmark. Before the conflict, the same voyage priced at WS 80-90, or roughly $2 million.

Dry bulk has been quieter and softer: the Baltic Dry Index slipped 39 points to 2,776 on 19 August, its lowest since 31 July, with the Capesize index at 4,376 and capesize average daily earnings at $39,684. Air cargo is the mirror image of container — the Baltic Air Freight Index (BAI00) added just 0.2% in the week to 17 August but sits 19.2% higher year on year, while jet fuel is up 76.5% on the year according to IATA's Jet Fuel Monitor. Whichever mode a shipper reaches for, the fuel and risk premium has already been priced in.

What It Costs Shippers

The clearest reading of the damage comes from exporters shipping to the Gulf. Turkey's carpet sector — the world's largest exporter of machine-woven carpet, with $1.26 billion of shipments to 184 markets in the first half of 2026 — has watched sea services to Dubai, Doha, Manama and Riyadh break down. Iskender Kaplan, who chairs the Turkish Exporters' Assembly carpet council, reports container prices at three to four times their old level and freight that used to cost around $2,000 now quoted at $8,000-10,000. Manufacturers are sitting on as much as 50 containers of finished goods waiting for a slot.

What happened next is the part that matters for anyone planning a lane. Exporters gave up on the sea route and moved to road — and then found the trucks gone too, with road freight to the Gulf quoted at $8,000-9,000, a squeeze that road carriers on the Türkiye-Iraq corridor reported from their own side of it. A mode switch only relieves pressure while there is slack in the mode you switch to. Meanwhile Turkey's July exports still set a record at $25.62 billion, the highest July on record, on 2.9% annual growth; imports rose 5.2% to $32.99 billion and the trade deficit widened 14% to $7.4 billion. Trade Minister Omer Bolat presented those figures explicitly against "rising freight, insurance and transport costs" — record volume, thinner margins.

Global supply chain management now rests not only on cost optimisation, but on risk distribution and security of supply.

Engin's read on the direction is measured: spot markets are easing as Hormuz transits recover, but the easing is "gradual and choppy, not a sharp collapse". Insurance costs have fallen faster than freight, which tells you the residual is structural rather than a risk premium waiting to unwind. Xeneta's Peter Sand puts it more bluntly — the disruption has become a deepened, structural problem rather than something that passes.

What Shippers Can Do Now

None of the above is controllable from a shipper's desk. Six things are.

1. Track the indices weekly. Drewry publishes the WCI on Thursdays; FBX and SCFI update alongside it. In a market that moves 10% in a week, a quarterly rate assumption is wrong long before the quarter ends.
2. Split spot and contract, and index-link the contract. Neither extreme survives lanes diverging by 18 points in one week. A floor-and-ceiling structure keeps you in a 2027 correction without paying today's spikes in full.
3. Book four to six weeks out. With 49 sailings cancelled through mid-September, a rolled box costs more than the rate difference between two carriers.
4. Cost the surcharges, not the index. GRI, PSS, equipment imbalance and emergency fuel sit above the base rate. Compare landed cost or you are comparing numbers nobody will invoice.
5. Reduce the number of boxes. At $4,339 per FEU, the cheapest container is the one you never book. Which ceiling fills first — volume or payload — decides how many you need.
6. Keep a second carrier and a second mode qualified. Price the road and intermodal alternative before you need it. The carpet exporters who already had a road option ran; the ones who did not, waited.

Point five is the only line on the list a shipper controls outright. Freight is quoted per container, not per cubic metre, so a box dispatched at 60% of its usable volume bills exactly the same as a full one. Whether volume or payload binds first is knowable before the booking is made — dense cargo hits the weight ceiling with the box two-thirds empty, light cargo cubes out with tonnes of headroom left — and knowing which it is, is the difference between four containers and five.

Outlook: How 2026 Closes and What 2027 Looks Like

Behind the geopolitical noise, the supply side has been building for two years. The container ship orderbook reached a record 11.8 million TEU across more than 1,350 vessels in March 2026 — about 34% of the existing fleet. More than 1.5 million TEU delivers this year and 3.0 million TEU in 2027, on top of a 1.8 million TEU "recycling overhang": older ships that should have been scrapped but stayed in service because Red Sea diversions kept charter demand strong. Sea-Intelligence, correcting nominal supply for structural slow-steaming, port congestion, the capacity absorbed by the Red Sea crisis and expected scrapping, concludes that the market is heading into cyclical overcapacity that peaks in 2027 at a level comparable to the 2016 container price wars.

The two forces point in opposite directions, and that is the honest summary of the outlook. Geopolitics is holding rates near the top of their range by removing effective capacity; the delivery schedule is filling the water with ships that will have to find cargo. If Hormuz and the Red Sea normalise, the absorbed capacity returns and the correction arrives quickly. If they do not, the glut stays masked and shippers keep paying for the masking. Either way, the planning conclusion is the same: treat freight as a volatile input to be measured weekly, not a fixed cost to be assumed annually.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: Drewry World Container Index and Cancelled Sailings Tracker (13 and 14 August 2026); Freightos Baltic Index (6 August 2026); Xeneta (6 and 12 August 2026); Argus Media via the Financial Times and Reuters (August 2026); Baltic Exchange (19 August 2026); TAC Index and the IATA Jet Fuel Monitor (17 August 2026); Turkish Ministry of Trade (3 August 2026); Turkish Exporters' Assembly; UTIKAD; Sea-Intelligence. Freight rates change weekly — the index block in this report is refreshed each Thursday alongside the new Drewry WCI reading. Published 21 August 2026.