The Break Freight Index measures what it costs to ship one 40-foot container on the spot market, week by week, on twelve of the busiest lanes in world trade. It is published by our data desk and underpins our shipping and markets coverage. The headline figure is a weighted composite; each lane is also published on its own.
What it measures
The index tracks the all-in spot rate for a standard 40-foot dry container (one FEU), port to port, including the basic ocean freight and the fuel surcharge but not terminal handling at either end. It records rates for bookings actually concluded during the week, not the rates carriers publish or brokers ask. The composite was set to 100 in its base week.
Asking prices and concluded rates can sit a long way apart. In a falling market carriers keep their published rates high and discount quietly; in a rising one, the published rate lags what shippers are already paying to get a box on board. Counting bookings is slower and harder, and it is the only way we know to measure what money actually changed hands.
The twelve lanes
- Shanghai to Rotterdam
- Shanghai to Genoa
- Shanghai to Los Angeles
- Shanghai to New York
- Singapore to Rotterdam
- Busan to Los Angeles
- Shanghai to Santos
- Shanghai to Jebel Ali
- Rotterdam to Shanghai
- Rotterdam to New York
- New York to Rotterdam
- Los Angeles to Shanghai
The list includes four backhaul lanes on purpose. Rates on the return leg often turn before the headline lanes do.
Where the rates come from
A panel of freight forwarders and cargo owners submits the rates on its concluded bookings each week, anonymised by the data desk before anyone else sees them. For each lane we take the median after removing the highest and lowest tenth of submissions. A lane with fewer than 15 bookings in a week is published but marked thin, and its weight in the composite is halved for that week.
Panel members are checked when they join and sampled at random afterwards: each quarter the data desk asks a few of them for the booking confirmations behind their submissions. A member whose figures cannot be supported is removed, and their past submissions are dropped from any week still open to revision.
How lanes are weighted
Each lane's weight reflects its share of the container volume reported by the panel over the previous twelve months. No lane may exceed 20% of the composite, so a single trade cannot dominate it. Weights are recalculated once a year and published on this page before they take effect.
When it publishes
The index is published once a week, at 10:00 London time on the first working morning of the week, covering bookings made in the seven days to the previous close. The figures appear on this page, in our markets coverage and in the Morning Manifest newsletter.
Revisions policy
Late submissions can revise the previous week's figure once, in the following release; revised values are marked and the original stays visible. We never revise further back than one week. Changes to the method are announced here at least four weeks before they apply, and past values are not recalculated under a new method. Corrections to errors are handled under our corrections policy.
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