Seacube Containers

It’s all about the container. In a sense the ship, the truck and even trains are just interchangeable pieces of the delivery system – it’s really all about getting the container from factory to warehouse and back again for reloading. A simple concept for an inherently complex business.

Greg Tuthill, the chief commercial officer at SeaCube, a New Jersey-based container leasing company, knows his way around the container. Tuthill, besides working on the container leasing side of the business – essentially a supplier of containers, has worked for a number of ocean carriers during his career, giving him a nuanced view of the challenges facing both carriers and shippers traversing the unpredictable waters of the off-again, on-again disrupted supply chain.

In an interview with AJOT, Tuthill was asked with so many unpredictable elements like COVID-19 instigated lockdowns and reopenings in China and now the Ukraine War and trade bans, how can a shipper or carrier keep their containers working, circulating in their networks? Tuthill’s take on the problem is to try and get ahead of the situation before it is a problem, “One, I think people forget that they need to be proactive and not reactive. Getting ahead of it, whether it’s seasonality, or trying to have contingency, or making sure that they have looked a couple months ahead…” He added that he’s telling his customers that they will need equipment in the 3rd and 4th quarters this year not to wait, “I wouldn’t wait that long for a couple reasons. One is I think the supply chain will get even more disrupted. Number two, the constraint the supply shocks across the globe will create – (producing) delays further upstream from the raw material suppliers, not being able to get materials delivered.”