Ocean Oct 10, 2026 · 8 min read

US-bound container rates have peaked

Transpacific spot rates turn lower as Xeneta calls the peak. Shanghai–Los Angeles spot rates fell 3% to $7,624 per 40ft container on 8 October, according to Drewry. Xeneta’s chief analyst Peter Sand says US-bound rates have peaked, “but they will not collapse”. We think he is right, and the East Coast has the furthest to fall. Sand forecasts $6,000–7,000 to the East Coast within three months, against $11,523 on 1 October. Transpacific blank sailings (cancelled voyages) drop from eleven to four next week, according to Drewry. Forwarders should stop quoting off September rates. Our call: Xeneta’s West Coast average below $6,500 by mid-December.

US-bound container rates have peaked, and the East Coast has the furthest to fall
Spot rates from Shanghai to Los Angeles fell 3% to $7,624 per 40ft container in the week to 8 October, according to Drewry’s World Container Index (WCI). Shanghai–New York fell 2% to $10,220. Xeneta’s chief analyst, Peter Sand, says Asia–US spot rates have reached their “post-Hormuz crisis peak”, according to FreightWaves.
A spot rate is the price for a single shipment booked now, as opposed to a contract rate agreed for a year. Rates here are per FEU, a forty-foot equivalent unit, which means one 40ft container.
Our view is simple. The transpacific has turned. The fall will start slowly, because carriers are still managing capacity and Chinese ports are still clearing backlogs. Then it will speed up into December. The biggest correction will come on the US East Coast, where the premium over the West Coast is four times what it was before the crisis.

What the indexes show

The major indexes have all stopped rising, even though they measure different things and give different levels.
Drewry’s composite WCI fell 2% to $4,351 per FEU on 8 October, according to Daily Cargo News. A week earlier, Shanghai–Los Angeles had been flat at $7,835 and Shanghai–New York had risen 1% to $10,428, according to The Loadstar.
Xeneta’s data show the turn more gently. On 1 October, its market average was $8,346 per FEU to the US West Coast and $11,523 to the East Coast, according to FreightWaves. Both were more than four times their 28 February pre-crisis level. On 7 October, the West Coast rate fell $2, its first daily decline in weeks, and stood at $8,336, according to FreightWaves. “It is a marginal move, but the first dip since mid-September,” Sand said. The East Coast averaged $11,512.
Freightos had Asia–US West Coast at $8,322 per FEU and the East Coast level at about $9,600 in its 6 October update.
Sand’s message is that the top is in, and the fall will be big but orderly. “Demand is not strong and rates have now peaked, but they will not collapse,” he said. His three-month forecast is $6,000–7,000 per FEU to the East Coast and $4,500–5,500 to the West Coast. From 1 October levels, that is a fall of about 39–48% on the East Coast and 34–46% on the West Coast. “That would be a sizable correction, but not a collapse,” he said.

Why the peak is behind us

Three things have changed at once: demand, congestion and capacity.
Demand first. The National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker, run with Hackett Associates, cut its September forecast for US imports to 2.28m TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) from 2.31m, according to FreightWaves. It forecasts 2.25m TEU in October and 2m in November. That is an 11% drop in a month. August imports were 2.3m TEU, down 0.7% on a year earlier. “Even with any fluctuations in final data, we’re likely past the busiest part of the year,” said Jonathan Gold, the NRF’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy. He also said “Most holiday merchandise has arrived,” according to Supply Chain Dive. Gold described a peak that “started early and was stretched out through the summer and early fall”.
Global volumes are still strong, which shows this is a US story, not a world one. Container Trades Statistics (CTS) counted a record 17.46m TEU worldwide in August, up 3.7% on a year earlier, according to FreightWaves. Its Global Price Index rose to 117, the highest since July 2024. Even so, CTS warned that “slowing month-to-month growth could signal a moderation in demand.”
Air freight is sending the same signal. The Freightos Air Index for China to North America fell more than 15% in a week to $5.60 per kg, according to Freightos’ 6 October update. We read that as the end of the rush to beat the holiday season.
Second, congestion is easing. According to FreightWaves, Asian port congestion is easing as typhoon season winds down, and China’s Golden Week holiday (1 to 7 October) cut exports. In mid-September, 157 vessels were waiting at berth in Shanghai, with delays of about seven to 10 days, according to Albert Zerega of American Global Logistics, quoted by Supply Chain Dive.
Third, capacity is coming back. Carriers cancelled voyages around Golden Week. These are called blank sailings. Drewry counts eleven blank sailings on the transpacific this week, and only four next week, according to Daily Cargo News. More ships on the lane in a month of falling imports is not a recipe for higher prices.

Why it will not fall fast yet

The same forces that set the peak will slow the descent. Freightos’ Judah Levine says blank sailings and backlogs from nearly three months of weather disruption at major Chinese ports “may keep the transpacific rate floor quite elevated”. Ascent Global Logistics told Supply Chain Dive that recovery “can take several weeks as terminals and carriers work through accumulated cargo volumes.” Drewry expects transpacific rates to stay stable next week.
Carriers will also try to push prices back up. They did exactly that last year. In October 2025, Xeneta’s Far East–US West Coast spot average rose 38% from 1 October to $2,138 per FEU, according to Xeneta’s own analysis at the time. Today’s West Coast rate is roughly four times that 2025 level, which gives carriers more room to cut and less reason for shippers to accept increases.
Then there are surcharges. Drewry Supply Chain Advisors’ Chantal McRoberts said on a JoC webinar, reported by The Loadstar, that rates could soften further, but that increases may come through surcharges, such as inflated fuel and pre-peak charges. “It’s the surcharges that are causing the biggest consternation,” she said. We expect surcharges to be the main battleground on US lanes this quarter.

What Asia–Europe and 2024 tell us

Asia–Europe peaked earlier, and it shows where the transpacific is heading. Asia–Europe spot rates have now fallen for 13 weeks in a row on Drewry’s index, according to Daily Cargo News. Since 1 July, Xeneta says Mediterranean spot rates are down 43% and Far East–North Europe down 34%, according to FreightWaves. That is almost exactly the size of the correction Sand is forecasting for US lanes over three months.
Part of the Asia–Europe slide is the Suez return. Ships going through the Red Sea instead of around Africa take less time, so the same fleet carries more boxes. Freightos says the Premier Alliance, the last of the big alliances not yet fully back in the Red Sea, has announced that some services will resume Red Sea transits this month. Drewry calls the “faster-than-expected return to the Suez route” the biggest threat to carrier efforts to support rates, according to The Loadstar. That does not shorten the transpacific, but it does free up ships that carriers could move onto it.
The last big disruption peak followed the same shape. In Drewry’s 4 July 2024 assessment, during the Red Sea crisis, Shanghai–Los Angeles was $7,472 and Shanghai–New York $9,158, according to Hellenic Shipping News. By 10 October 2024, they were $5,019 and $5,761, according to AJOT. That is a fall of about 33% to the West Coast and 37% to the East Coast in 14 weeks. As now, the East Coast fell further.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

Stop pricing customers off September. Any quote built on late-September spot levels is now too high, and a competitor will undercut it. Re-quote weekly, not monthly, until the indexes settle.
Watch the East Coast premium above all. It was $3,177 per FEU on 1 October, against $772 before the Hormuz crisis, according to FreightWaves. Sand expects it to narrow. As the gap narrows, the case for sending East Coast cargo through West Coast ports by rail or truck gets weaker. All-water East Coast cargo, shipped by sea the whole way, has the most to gain from waiting.
Keep contract and spot apart. We think short-term quotes will beat long-term offers through the fourth quarter. Forwarders are getting a better hearing too. “Even freight forwarders are now getting better deals from carriers in long-term contract negotiations,” Sand said. Use that. Push back on late-season GRIs (general rate increases), and read the surcharge lines as closely as the base rate.
Mind the tail risk. The Hormuz crisis is what lifted rates fourfold. Sand himself warns that further major disruption or conflict cannot be ruled out. A renewed shock would reset all of this, so avoid locking customers into fixed all-in prices that run past the end of the year without a review clause.

Our call

Our prediction: the transpacific slide will be slower than Sand’s in October, then catch up. Expect one carrier-led attempt to lift rates in late October or November that fades within two weeks. By mid-December, we expect Xeneta’s Asia–US West Coast average to be below $6,500 per FEU and the East Coast premium below $2,000. Sand’s full range, $4,500–5,500 to the West Coast, will not be reached before January, and the usual pre-Lunar New Year rush in the new year may stop it short.

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