Maritime Empty Container Repositioning: A Problem Review

Abstract

Maritime shipping containers are important to a number of different industries as they facilitate the reduction of transportation costs. To address the needs of shippers, empty containers need to be repositioned globally between seaports. Since the cost of empty container repositioning (ECR) constitutes a significant element of the total cost of running a global container fleet operation, the problem has been receiving increasing attention from scholars. The diversity of this literature necessitates the development an appropriate classification scheme to identify trends, gaps, and directions for future research. This paper reviews publications on maritime ECR over the last two decades and examines such trends and potential research directions.