Title: Empty container movements beyond the effect of trade imbalance: Turkish terminals

Authors: Ahmet Selcuk Basarici; Tanzer Satir

Addresses: Maritime Faculty, Istanbul Technical University, Postane Mah., Sahil Cad., 34940, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey ' Maritime Faculty, Istanbul Technical University, Postane Mah., Sahil Cad., 34940, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract: The research objective of this study is to reveal the facts and magnitude of empty container movements (ECM) other than trade imbalances, which is called additional empty container movements (AECM) herein. According to the research, objectives have been extended to reveal the reasons for this, to form an opinion about the root causes, and to submit implications and recommendations on how to reduce this. We must distinguish trade imbalance and AECM to find a reasonable solution for effective container transportation and to eradicate avoidable ECM. We have categorised the reasons for ECM and proposed a model and mathematical formula to quantify the magnitude of AECM. The unique formula derived from the proposed model has been implemented to analyse ECM in Turkish terminals for the throughput between 2013 and 2015. The results of the empirical study indicate significant magnitude of AECM.

Keywords: maritime container transportation; container repositioning; market effect; Turkish container terminals; empty container movement; trade imbalance; logistics systems; logistics model; management of container transportation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2019.100111

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2019 Vol.33 No.2, pp.141 - 166

Received: 29 Mar 2017
Accepted: 09 Oct 2017
Published online: 09 Jun 2019 *

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