Shipping is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo by sea, and is extended in US English to refer to transport by land or air (UK English: "carriage"). "Logistics", a term borrowed from the military environment, is also fashionably used in the same sense.
Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck (UK English: lorry). In air and sea shipments, ground transport is required to take the cargo from its place of origin to the airport or seaport and then to its destination because it is not always possible to establish a production facility near ports due to limited coastlines of countries. Ground transport is typically more affordable than air, but more expensive than sea especially in developing countries like India, where inland infrastructure is not efficient.
Shipment of cargo by trucks, directly from the shipper's place to the destination, is known as a door to door shipment and more formally as multimodal transport. Trucks and trains make deliveries to sea and air ports where cargo is moved in bulk.
Much shipping is done aboard actual ships. An individual nation's fleet and the people that crew it are referred to as its merchant navy or merchant marine. Merchant shipping is like lifeblood to the world economy, carrying 90% of international trade with 102,194 commercial ships worldwide.
Read more about Shipping: Terms of Shipment
Famous quotes containing the word shipping:
“Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)