Shipping | What Is Shipping By Bulk? All You Need To Know

Shipping | What Is Shipping By Bulk? All You Need To Know

Each day, massive ships move thousands of tons of bulk cargo around the world. These huge ships can transport up to 400,000 metric tons of deadweight and account for 21% of merchant fleets worldwide.

In this article, we break down exactly what bulk shipping is, how it works, and how bulk shipments can be beneficial for your business.



What Is Shipping By Bulk?
Bulk shipping refers to the shipping of large quantities of goods that are loaded onto shipping vessels without packaging. These goods are placed in the hold of a ship (a space for carrying cargo in the ship’s compartment). For example, let’s say you have a large shipment of grains that need to be transported from Africa to Germany. The grains have to be loaded into the vessel’s hold directly using cranes or other equipment.

Bulk shipments are carried on specially-built bulk carrier ships that are designed to transfer these goods around the world. Bulk shipping is used when you have to transport big measures of cargo on bulk carrier ships that can make long trips across the ocean, so they’re not ideal for just-in-time inventory shipments.



How Does Bulk Shipping Work?
Bulk shipping works through three steps: storage, loading, and unloading.

1. Port storage- Your bulk goods are stored at the ports where they are shipped from. This means your goods are left in a port facility until it’s time for shipping them.
2. Loading onto ships- Once the vessel arrives your bulk cargo is loaded into the hold of the ship by a large crane or conveyer belt or other modes.
3. Unloading at the destination port- When your cargo reaches the destination, your goods are loaded onto trucks for the final leg of the delivery.

What Determines Bulk Shipping Prices?
When it comes to bulk shipping, freight rates are usually calculated in dollars per ton and volumn of cargo. The price of bulk shipments is dependent on other factors as well. There are around 4 factors that affect the prices, which are as follows:

1. Shipment size and weight- The bigger and weightier your bulk shipment is, the higher the cost is going to be.
2. Distance traveled- Here again the longer the bulk shipment has to travel to reach its destination the pricier it will be.
3. Freight class- This looks into factors like the density and the value of the bulk shipment, i.e., how susceptible your items are to damage and the product’s handling characteristics. Delicate and valuable goods usually have higher freight classification, hence higher freight rates.
4. Dimensional weight- The dimensional weight is a standard formula that considers the shipment’s density to determine shipping costs. For example, goods that are light in weight but take up a lot of space will be charged by dimensional weight. A large number of pillows would make for a good example here for cargo that can be charged by dimensional weight.




Types of Goods To Ship With Bulk Shipping
Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at what kinds of goods can be shipped via bulk shipping. Practically speaking there are thousands of goods that can be bulk shipped. But they are commonly classified under dry bulk and liquid bulk. These two groups are shipped and loaded in different ways and are very common in bulk shipping.

-Dry Bulk
The storage of these goods comprises the use of conveyor belts, cranes, hoppers, or silos. Solid bulk can include cargo such as grains, coal, and various minerals like copper, limestone, plastics, and wood items. These goods are shipped using bulk carriers (large vessels designed to carry solid bulk). These carriers consist of a single running deck with several hatchways.

-Liquid Bulk
Pumping stations and pipelines are used to load and unload these liquid materials into tankers for transport. Liquids that can be bulked shipped can range from liquid nitrogen to natural gas and petroleum to cooking oils. The tankers (ships used to carry liquid bulk cargo) are designed with double hulls to strengthen their structures to be able to carry tons of deadweight.