All Water Verses Mini Landbridge

Shipping from Asia to the United States can mean a long trip with huge lead times and sometimes freight costs can seem to be ever rising. Then your freight forwarder asks you if you want to send the cargo All Water (AW) or Mini Landbridge (MLB) and you are feeling trapped. If you accept AW then your supply chain time window will grow substantially, but if you decide to go with MLB it could mean a 20-25% increase in costs. As in any decision about shipping, it definitely depends on the product, the demand, and the costs either way. For instance if your product is shipping for Christmas sales but will not be ready from the factory in China until September then regardless of low freight costs, shipping AW will cost more money than it saves due to missed sales. This can also be a difficult decision for regular shipments. Keep in mind that just because you use AW one time, does not mean that you cannot use MLB the next time when you have a smaller window to work with. Many shippers decide to change even at the last minute to accommodate new schedules and orders that may need a faster transit. Usually as long as your cargo is not gated in yet, you can still change. Be careful of last minute changes however since the last ones in are many times the ones to get bumped to a later vessel. In the end, AW vs MLB can be a decision left to the individual shipment based on the needs at the time of shipping.