A parcel is an individual

consignment Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property while retaining full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, ...

cargo In transportation, cargo refers to goods transported by land, water or air, while freight refers to its conveyance. In economics, freight refers to goods transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. The term cargo is also used in cas ...

for shipment. Is the unit used in the daily practice for sending and receiving all kinds of

. It may have all shapes and sizes. The size can range from an actual

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

parcel to 100 boxes of

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

, with a top limit, for example, of 4 million

barrels A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids ...

cargo of

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

large enough to fill a

supertanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined cr ...

Parcel sizes

Each product has particular parcel size in which may be transported in the most economical way. This is expressed as ''parcel size distribution''. Thus, the ''parcel size distribution'' size for

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

it's completely different from the size used for

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

, for

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

or for

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

. For sea Bulk transport there are given some typical parcel sizes. For coal is between 20,000 and 160,000 tons, but for the majority of cargoes parcel sizes lie between 150,000 and 60,000 tons. Iron ore is transported especially in parcel sizes of 150,000 tons, while with grain sizes are between 60,000 and 25,000 tons. When transporting sugar the most common parcel sizes are around 25,000 tons. Maximizing parcels to the maximum possible size has helped the

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of Productivity, output produced per unit of cost (production cost). A decrease in ...

. This has contributed to the economic growth of the use of great vessels after the

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. However, there are a number of factors that limit the parcel size : * The

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

level; * Available depth; * Decreasing economies of scale in larger ships. The transition from bulk to

begins when parcel sizes smaller than the carrying capacity of a single ship. The option than is transporting several parcels together, making generally necessary the use of a

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

, then the transportation costs rise sharply. With the advent of the

intermodal containers An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, or a freight container, (or simply "container") is a large metal crate designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different mod ...

it has become possible to transport smaller parcels efficiently ( loading and unloading), the same way the cargo has also benefit from the

that had taken place earlier in the bulk transportation.

References

{{reflist

Bibliography

* Stopford, M. (2009): ''Maritime economics, 3rd edition'', Routledge.
The container revolution, Dr. Salvatore R. Mercogliano, Sea History nr. 114, year 2006
Freight transport

Parcel sizes

See also

References

Bibliography