Freight Rates Soar by 220%! The Cost-Saving Solution That Suqian Bosses Adopted Overnight

When international sea freight prices fluctuate like a roller coaster, Mr. Zhang, staring at the latest quotation sheet on the computer screen, frowns. As the head of a foreign trade enterprise in Suqian, he has just received a notice from the freight forwarder: The container freight rate for the US West Coast route has increased by 220% year-on-year. At this moment, there are less than three weeks left before the deadline for the delivery of his next batch of goods.

In Suqian, an inland city that is not on the coast, the traditional thinking always holds that exports must go through the fixed process of "truck → Shanghai Port → Sea Transport". But few people notice that the Lianyungang-Suqian Sea-Rail Intermodal Special Train has quietly achieved a stable time limit of "loading containers on Monday and arriving at the port on Friday". Zhongshitong Logistics data shows that through the railway connection to the Lianyungang route, the overall transportation cost is 18%-35% lower than that of pure road transport.

• Cost comparison: The short-haul cost of a 40-foot container by road is about 4800 yuan, while the railway section only needs 2100 yuan
• Time advantage: The railway departs on schedule and is not affected by high-speed traffic jams, with a punctuality rate of 97.6%
• Green bonus item: The carbon emission is only 1/4 of that of road transport

When Ms. Li first tried sea-rail intermodal transport, she once encountered the embarrassment of inconsistent information between the customs declaration form and the railway waybill. "Later, I realized that completing the pre-entry 48 hours in advance is the key." Zhongshitong experts have summarized three pit-avoidance guidelines:

• During the booking stage: Confirm the seamless connection between the railway space and the shipping schedule
• Document preparation: Pay special attention to the consistency of the 13-digit container number and the seal number
• Emergency plan: Reserve a 10% buffer time to deal with the temporary scheduling of the railway

With the operation of the Suqian Bonded Logistics Center (Type B), the convenient measures of "one declaration, one inspection" are being popularized. A certain enterprise successfully compressed the whole-process time limit of Korean re-exported goods to 12 days through Zhongshitong's intelligent scheduling system, nearly one week faster than the traditional route.

Standing at the node of the New Eurasian Continental Bridge, the choices of Suqian enterprises may need to be re-examined: When the "Lianyungang-Suqian" special train departs stably 3 times a day, and the railway yard can complete the sea freight booking, do we still have to stubbornly believe that "going to sea must pass through Shanghai"?

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