Saturday, November 7, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Nov 7, 2026 · 7 min read

SCFI falls as US East Coast drops below $10,000

Six per cent blanked is not enough to save November’s transpacific rates

The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) fell 53.9 points on Friday 6 November, to 3,633.45. That is a 1.46% drop and the first fall in five weeks. The SCFI is a weekly index of spot rates out of Shanghai, published by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange. According to OpenContainer’s weekly table, it had gained four weeks in a row through 30 October, though only by small amounts. This week’s fall wiped out all of those gains.

The headline number is Asia–US East Coast. It fell $342, or 3.35%, to $9,857 per FEU (one 40ft container), Liberty Times Net reported. That is below $10,000.

Our view is simple. Carriers are not taking out enough ships to defend transpacific rates in November. The sailings are still going, the cargo is slowing, and the rate filings are drifting away from what the market pays. The Mediterranean is the one main lane still moving up, and even there the gains are small.

What moved this week

Here is the 6 November SCFI by lane, as reported by Liberty Times Net:

  • Asia–US West Coast: $7,381 per FEU, down $98 (-1.31%)
  • Asia–US East Coast: $9,857 per FEU, down $342 (-3.35%)
  • Asia–North Europe: $2,325 per TEU, down $45 (-1.89%)
  • Asia–Mediterranean: $3,393 per TEU, up $43 (+1.28%)
  • Asia–Southeast Asia: $1,159 per TEU, down $5 (-0.42%)

A TEU is one 20ft container, so the Europe and Med figures are for half-size boxes. One caution: Anue/cnyes printed its Europe and Med numbers per FEU and they do not line up with the per-TEU figures. We use the per-TEU figures because that is the SCFI standard for those lanes.

The composite is now the lowest since early September. OpenContainer’s table shows 3,590.05 on 4 September and 3,662.18 on 11 September. China’s other big index moved the other way. The CCFI (China Containerized Freight Index), which mixes spot and contract rates, rose 0.3% to 1,881.82, STNN reported. A small rise in a slower index does not change the story. The CCFI follows spot rates with a lag.

Drewry’s World Container Index (WCI), a separate weekly spot benchmark, points the same way as the SCFI. Drewry says its composite fell 1% to $4,389 per 40ft on 5 November. The week before, on 29 October, Drewry had Shanghai–Los Angeles at $7,514 and Shanghai–New York at $9,631, down $493 and $535 on the week, according to Ship Universe. Shanghai–Genoa was unchanged at $4,151 and Shanghai–Rotterdam was up $54 to $3,686.

The supply side is the real story

Rates fall when there are more ships than boxes. The tool carriers use to fix that is the blank sailing: a scheduled voyage they cancel to take capacity out of the market.

Drewry’s Cancelled Sailings Tracker, published 6 November, says “46 blank sailings are expected across major East–West trades between week 46 (9–15 November) and week 50 (8–14 December).” The base is 717 scheduled sailings. That is a 6% cancellation rate, and Drewry says 94% of sailings are expected to run.

By share of blanks, Drewry puts Asia–North Europe and Med at 50%, the transpacific eastbound at 35% and the transatlantic at 15%. Gemini Cooperation, the Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd network, has the lowest projected blank rate of the major groups, at 1%.

Drewry’s own summary line reads: “The return to Suez is gathering momentum, while freight rates continue to face modest downwards pressure”. That matters for the Asia–Europe trade. Every ship that goes back through the Suez Canal instead of around Africa finishes its round trip sooner. That frees up ships without anyone ordering new ones.

One more caution on the Drewry numbers. A linked Drewry WeChat headline on the same page puts the blank rate at 8% over the next five weeks, not 6%. The page does not explain the gap. Either way, the number is in single digits.

Our reading: a 6% blank rate going into the slack weeks before Christmas is a market where carriers are choosing volume over price. On the transpacific, they are cutting less than they would need to hold the line.

Filed rates versus the market

The clearest sign of strain is the gap between what carriers file and what the index shows.

Cnyes reported MSC’s November FAK reference rates at about $9,200 per FEU to the US West Coast and about $13,247 to the US East Coast. An FAK (freight all kinds) rate is the carrier’s published spot tariff for general cargo. Against this week’s SCFI, those filings sit about 25% above the market to the West Coast and about 34% above to the East Coast.

That is not a gap the market closes by moving up in a slow month. Liberty Times Net reported that market observers expect November demand to slow. Cargo shipped now lands close to Thanksgiving and Christmas, which is late for holiday stock. The same report pointed to possible APEC-related traffic controls in Shenzhen that could hit South China exports. It also said carriers are managing capacity and offering discounts on specific sailings.

That last point is worth stressing. Discounts on specific sailings mean the filed rate is an opening position, not the price.

The same observers, in the same report, expect US port congestion and rail delays to keep US rates relatively high. We take that seriously. It is why we expect the transpacific to drift lower rather than collapse. But congestion inland does not fill a ship leaving Shanghai.

What happened last November

There is a recent precedent, and it is not encouraging for carriers.

On 4 November 2025, Mohawk Global reported: “Trans-Pacific carriers have announced a General Rate Increase (GRI) effective November 15, 2025, and December 1, 2025.” A GRI is a general rate increase, a flat rise carriers announce across a trade.

The SCFI fell through most of that month anyway. OpenContainer’s table shows the composite going from 1,550.70 to 1,495.10 in the week to 7 November 2025. It then fell to 1,451.38 on 14 November and 1,393.56 on 21 November, before a small bounce to 1,403.13 on 28 November.

Laufer Group’s Transpacific Eastbound Market Update for week 49 of 2025 explained why: “The lack of blank sailings continued to pressure freight rates downward through November”. On the December increase, it said: “Since then, market rates have fallen back to November levels—and even lower on some lanes—through December 14.”

The level is very different this year. The composite is about 2.4 times where it stood a year ago. But the setup is similar: November filings, softer holiday demand and carriers that are not cutting hard. Last year the filings did not hold. We see no reason this year should go differently on the transpacific.

What forwarders should do now

First, quote off the index, not the filing. On the US lanes the filed FAK is 25% to 34% above the SCFI. A shipper who sees a quote close to the filing will check it against the index, and many already do.

Second, keep spot quote validity short. Two weeks is long in a falling market. If you hold a buy rate for the second half of November, you take the risk if the market drops under you.

Third, plan space by lane, not by trade. Half of Drewry’s projected blanks are on Asia–North Europe and Med. With the Med the only main SCFI lane still rising, that is where space could tighten on certain loops. Asia–Med is the lane where locking in space early is worth paying for. The transpacific is the lane where waiting probably pays.

Fourth, watch the gap between Gemini and everyone else. At a 1% projected blank rate, Gemini will run close to its full schedule. That is good for reliability. It also adds capacity that other carriers have to compete with.

Fifth, watch the US East Coast closely. It had the biggest weekly fall and still has the biggest gap to the filed rate. It is also the lane where inland rail delays are most likely to slow how fast boxes and chassis come back, which can put a floor under the price.

Our call

We expect Drewry’s Shanghai–Los Angeles rate to fall below $7,000 per 40ft by its week-47 reading, published around 19 November. We do not expect any transpacific GRI to stick before December. On Asia–Europe, we expect Shanghai–Rotterdam to be back below $3,522 per 40ft and Shanghai–Genoa below $4,500 by the same 19 November reading. We do not expect November FAK filings on the trade to be realised. We expect Drewry’s composite WCI to stay below $4,485 through late November.

The 6 November data backs that view. The SCFI has turned down, the US East Coast is below $10,000, and carriers have scheduled 94% of their East–West sailings to run.

Sources

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