How an issue is put together

Busan to Rotterdam spot, 40ft

$3,450+$25

Asia to North Europe services tracked

38

Rotterdam time, every Tuesday

07:00

Harbor Notes is back after six months off. Before the first full issue next week, here is how one is built, so you know what to skip and what to trust. Every issue follows the same order: the numbers, the argument, the evidence, and what I would do about it.

Pictures carry a caption and a credit, and they are never decoration. Nordica approaching Rotterdam, September 2025. Photo: Alf van Beem, CC0.

The argument comes first

The second paragraph of an issue says what I think happened. If you read nothing else, read that. The rest of the issue is there so you can disagree with it on the evidence and not on my tone.

Sources, in order of trust

1. A carrier’s booking system, read on the day.
2. Its published schedule feed.
3. A tariff PDF, which is usually right and occasionally months out of date.¹
4. Anything said on an earnings call.

When I quote a figure, I say which of these it came from. When two of them disagree, I print both.

Tables are the charts

I don’t draw charts. A table of lanes with a bar per row shows the shape of the market and still lets you copy the number.

How a rate table looks: all-in spot, 40ft, a median of three forwarders' offers.

Lane	Rate per FEU	Relative to the highest rate	Change	Note
Shanghai to Rotterdam	$3,610		+$40	7 days valid
Busan to Rotterdam	$3,450		+$25
Port Klang to Jebel Ali	$1,090		-$15	14 days valid

Smaller comparisons stay in plain Markdown:

Source	Updated	Lag to the index
Booking portal	Continuous	0 days
Schedule feed	Daily	1 day
Weekly spot index	Friday	4 days

What readers send

I booked Vietnam cargo on a Monday after your note on refresh days, and the quote held. Keep the boring tables.

A forwarder in Hamburg

Letters like that one shape what comes next. Short ones, mostly:

• a screenshot of a schedule that changed overnight,
• an invoice line that does not match the tariff,
• a question I can’t answer yet.

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Footnotes

1. Issue 104 is the time it was. ↩