Container Bytes: Weekly Ocean & Air Freight Intelligence for Supply Chain Pros

Welcome back to Container Bytes! 📍 It’s July, and the Strait of Hormuz is locked in a dangerous pattern of starts, stops, and serious military escalations. Yet, the energy market is throwing a complete curveball: crude oil prices have unexpectedly plummeted back to pre-war baselines. Instead of the catastrophic energy shortages predicted months ago, the industry is suddenly bracing for a global o...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, joined as always by our resident freight expert, Judah Levine. 📍 It’s July 1st, and while it feels a bit like a broken record to talk about the Strait of Hormuz, the dynamics on the water have shifted completely. We are no longer looking at a standard blockade—we are witnessing a raw power struggle over who runs the waterway. In this episode, w...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, alongside our resident freight expert, Judah Levine. 📍 Let's get "Strait" to it. (Yes, it's a bad joke, but things are moving too fast to pass up a pun). Following the historic US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, the Strait of Hormuz is finally seeing a trickle of traffic. But behind the headlines, the reality is a logistic...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! 📍 This week, Julia Frohwein is riding that post-birthday glow alongside our resident freight expert, Judah Levine, to break down a massive, chaotic turn of events. Headlines are screaming about a historic US-Iran interim peace agreement, but before you celebrate the "full reopening" of the Strait of Hormuz by this weekend, you need to read the fine print...

Happy birthday to me! 🎂 I’m Julia Frohwein, celebrating my special day by powering through another intense session with our resident freight guru, Judah Levine. The headlines are full of escalating US-Iran and Iran-Israel naval fire, but the biggest shockwave this week isn't military—it's the massive early arrival of Ocean Peak Season . 📍 In this episode, we unpack why the National Ret...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, powering through being a bit "under the weather" this week alongside our resident freight expert Judah Levine to unpack a highly volatile session. 📍 The Persian Gulf conflict is intensifying, and while peace negotiations continue, ocean freight has officially hit the panic button on early Peak Season demand. In this episode, we break...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, joined by our resident freight guru Judah Levine to unpack another high-velocity week in global shipping. While rumors of a negotiated end to the war have ships in the Persian Gulf optimistically drifting toward the Strait of Hormuz, experts warn that infrastructure damage means a fuel price hangover could last well into next year. In this episo...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, joined as always by our resident freight expert Judah Levine, ready to break down another high-stakes week in global logistics. 📍 The Strait of Hormuz remains tenser than ever, with a planned US retaliatory strike temporarily pushed off by President Trump while negotiations continue in the shadow of a crumbling ceasefire. In this episode, we ta...

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, but it officially has a new "manager." 📍 This week, Julia Frohwein and Judah Levine dive into Iran’s creation of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority —a move that signals a permanent intent to entrench authority over the passageway. While Operation Freedom managed to extract a few US-flagged vessels, the naval exchanges between the US and Iran have only...

Welcome back to Container Bytes! I’m Julia Frohwein, and I’m back with Judah Levine to break down a week that felt like a decade. We’re diving into the rapid-fire timeline of Project Freedom —the US-led effort to force transit through the Strait of Hormuz that resulted in naval skirmishes and was suspended almost as quickly as it began. In this episode, we analyze why ocean rates are proving remar...

Welcome to a very special episode of Container Bites! If you’re wondering why Eytan suddenly has long brown hair and a British accent—don’t panic. 📍 I’m Julia Frohwein, and I’m thrilled to be taking over the mic. This week, Judah and I dive into the "Quiet Crisis." The ceasefire is holding, but with the Strait of Hormuz still closed and the US blockade in place, oil prices are creeping...

Get your freight emergency kits ready, because the fuel market is bordering on absolute chaos.  Between the IRGC boarding container ships in the Strait of Hormuz and Lufthansa slashing 20,000 flights due to fuel concerns,  capacity is getting squeezed from both ends.  While jet fuel prices have dipped slightly from their March peak, the real ghost in the machine is availability . Europe might only...

Get your freight Christmas sweater on (yes, even in April), because the Straits of Hormuz are getting chilly🥁.  We’re diving into why the Hormuz blockade(ish) your ocean rates are staying surprisingly grounded while jet fuel prices are pulling an Artemis II. Judah explains the "Inverse Crisis Correlation"-  we have so many ships due to overcapacity that even a Middle East blockade can&a...

Better late than never.  Hope your supply chain is holding up better than my audio equipment.  The ceasefire news is hogging the headlines, but don't let the noise fool you;the Straits of Hormuz are still effectively a "no-go" zone for container ships. While carriers like CMA CGM and COSCO are trickling a few vessels out, nobody is exactly rushing back in.  Ocean rates are staying s...

The Supreme Court  tossed IEEPA tariffs out, but don't pop the champagne just yet. The White House pivoted with a (temporary-ish) 10% global tariff under Section 122 just four days later. It's currently sitting well below the 15% to 20% ranges we saw previously, but with the July expiration date looming, the USTR is sprinting through 122 new trade investigations. The billion-dollar quest...

The Middle East isn't exactly "business as usual," (you knew that) BUT the cargo heart is starting to beat again. We’re moving past the total shutdown and into the "creative logistics" phase. That's a polite way of saying everything is moving by truck on two-lane highways and costing a fortune. The real story this week isn't just the closure of the Strait; it’s t...

Welcome back to the pod!  This week, I (Eytan) and Judah (not me) dive into why the Straits of Hormuz is the latest headache for your bottom line, even if your containers aren't actually in the Gulf. We’re tracking "Emergency Contingency Surcharges" (top-tier naming, guys) that are adding $300-$400 per container just as we hit the post-Lunar New Year lull. On the bright side, the Su...

Special edition for you independent forwarders out there. SMB forwarders are tired of being told they’re "dinosaurs" by Silicon Valley.  They’re tired of waiting for ERP roadmaps that never arrive. And they're tired of being told they can't compete with the $100M tech budgets of the global giants. They’re wrong. In this episode, I sit down with Farouk Gomati , President of Inte...

Welcome back to another "uneventful" week in Global Freight. 📍 This week, Eytan opens with a dad-joke for the ages: What is the White House's favorite craft beer? An IEEPA. 🍺 (International Emergency Economic Powers Act). It’s a bitter brew that the Supreme Court just poured down the drain. In this episode #21, Judah and Eytan break down the Section 122 Pivot. After SCOTUS struck...

They never thought we'd make it, but here we are: Episode 20. We’ve been talking about Lunar New Year for six weeks, but we were still blindsided by the reality of it this week. Forget the traditional benchmarks—Judah’s inbox is currently the world’s most accurate economic indicator, overflowing with hundreds of out-of-office replies. In this episode, we break down the Ocean Rate Cliff , with...

We’re back for episode 19, and with Lunar New Year just days away (Feb 17th), the "Gear Down" is officially here. Manufacturing is slowing down, and for the first time this year, we don't have a major geopolitical change to talk about. It almost feels... quiet. In this episode, we break down the LNY Rate Slide : Asia-Europe is down to $2,400/container and the Med has plummeted to $3...

Welcome back to Freightos' Container Bytes, Episode 18. Judah and I were just reminiscing about the fact that we don't have theme music. We still don't. But what we do have is a weather report that’s actually scarier than the geopolitics for once. Storm Kristin just put the North Atlantic in a chokehold, grounding vessels from Spain to the English Channel and proving that Mother Nat...

Welcome back to Freightos' Container Bytes, Episode 17. We’re only four weeks in, and we’ve had more trade "wars" than I’ve had hot coffees.  This week, Eytan and Judah track the whiplash of the Greenland deal—shoutout to Davos for the "peace framework"—and the immediate shift of the tariff-cannon toward our neighbors to the North. While the US threatens 100% tariffs on Ca...

Time for a high-stakes episode of "Where in the World is the Trade War?" with our  Greenland Bingo card. ❄️ In this episode, Judah and Eytan break down the sudden 10% tariff threat on the EU (which apparently wasn't on anyone's 2026 forecast) and why the EU is dusting off its "Big Bazooka" in retaliation. We also check in on the Red Sea, where Maersk is leaning in jus...

Welcome back to Freightos' Container Bytes, the podcast that is technically Episode 15, despite the fact that our team’s ability to count past 14 has recently been called into question. We dive into the geopolitical soup of the Strait of Hormuz. While the headlines are screaming about oil, we’re looking at the real logistics casualty: the UAE’s Jebel Ali port. If the "Ocean-to-Air"...