Since the Panama Canal Authority announced plans in 2006 for a third set of locks that can handle ships twice as big as the current locks, the industry has been girding for the potential shift of trans-Pacific shipments to the U.S. East Coast. East Coast ports have spent billions of dollars to dredge channels deep enough to accommodate the big new ships capable of handling up to 12,500 TEUs that will transit the canal when the new locks open, expected in 2014. But importers of goods from Asia probably will wait before switching to all-water services to see if the bigger ships can offer large enough advantages over the mini-landbridge route from West Coast ports to the Midwest. It’s far too soon to tell how the pricing of the bigger-volume all-water services to the East Coast will shake out. One expert said, “Our friends in the Panama Canal grabbed most of the savings by increasing tolls from $40 to $72 per TEU. So they took maybe 40 percent of the savings already.”
