Stacks of empty shipping containers drive up costs Lindsay Chappell Print Battleships can't turn on a dime, and neither, apparently, can the global traffic of container ships. And that's bad news for the auto industry. According to the consulting firm AlixPartners, a perfect storm of market problems last year got the world's supply of shipping containers out of whack, and as a result, overseas shipping prices have been rising. The spot price for shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Long Beach, Calif., has reached a 10-year high, exceeding $4,000, AlixPartners reported last week—up from a normal rate of $1,600. The problem: The arrival of the pandemic in spring halted overseas supply line movement for many manufacturers, and that was followed by an abnormal surge in fear-driven consumer demand for household goods, which was followed in turn by surging factory orders to make up for lost 2020 production time, which was followed by a late-2020 second wave of the pandemic.