I’ve been in freight for over 30 years and i’ve never seen this happen before.
We move a lot of cargo, as you can imagine. And when you scale things to this kind of level, sometimes crazy stuff happens that you’d never expect.
Now, as you know, at Millennium Cargo, we make it our mission to make sure your goods get to where they need to go. We’re the pros when it comes to planning freight routes, advising on packaging, rules and regulations and customs charges. All the things that you need to get right if you want smooth sailing for your cargo. That said, when you’re dealing with the oceans, you can’t guarantee safe passage. It’s very rare but sometimes something happens that means your cargo is lost. Pirate attacks, hurricanes, container fires… you get the gist? That’s why we always advise all our customers to get cargo insurance every single time. I mean, just look at the recent Baltimore Bridge incident? The cargo on that ship will likely never make it to its end destination. It’s super rare, but lost, stolen or damaged containers do happen.
Do you know what I’ve never seen happen until now? An empty container… Picture this. You package up your goods, in this case a container full of mattresses, and send them on their merry way across the ocean. Weeks go by and all seems well. The ship is tracked, on time and arrives in the port with your container intact. But when you crack that baby open, what do you find? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Just an empty container! The cargo was missing. No signs. No clues. So we put on our Sherlock Holmes hats and got on the case… A little digging and delving later, we discovered what had happened.
The container and its cargo had made it through to customs where they’d removed the mattresses to examine them. All fairly typical stuff… But instead of putting the cargo back in the container once it had been cleared, they accidentally put it in the wrong warehouse bay – the one for cargo that must be destroyed! Poof! Up in flames. Never to be seen again. Crazy, huh? Bet you never thought something like that could happen to you? But it just goes to show that sometimes the unexpected, unpredictable and unprecedented does happen! So insure your goods. Every time. You just never know what could happen…
How about you? Have you heard of any crazy missing or lost cargo stories? I’d love to hear them…