Container Freight Rates

The two indices and how they differ

Drewry's World Container Index is assessed each Thursday from spot quotes on eight major east-west lanes and reported as a composite in US dollars per 40ft container. Freightos's Baltic Index is built from booking data on the Freightos platform across twelve lanes, published daily, and is the basis of the freight futures traded on CME. Both move together on the big turns; FBX tends to react first because it updates daily.

Neither index is a contract rate. Most volume between large shippers and carriers moves on annual contracts signed in the spring, so a spot spike shows up in contract rates with a lag, if at all.

What a move in the index means

A rate rise on the Transpacific or Asia to Europe lanes is almost always a capacity story: blank sailings, port congestion, a canal closure or a rerouting that lengthens voyages and absorbs ships. A fall is usually new vessel deliveries meeting flat demand.

Freight is a small share of the landed cost of most goods, so a doubling of container rates adds a few tenths of a point to goods inflation at most. The market reads the indices less as an inflation input and more as a real-time gauge of trade volumes and supply-chain stress.

Trucking and domestic freight

Once a container lands, the Cass Freight Index (monthly shipments and expenditures across North American freight modes) and DAT's national spot rates for van, reefer and flatbed loads describe the domestic leg. Cass tracks volume; DAT tracks the price per mile a truck earns on the spot market, which rises when loads outnumber available trucks.