LISBON, Portugal — A fire aboard a ship carrying cars in the Mid-Atlantic is dying out, a Portuguese navy officer said Feb. 22, and the huge vessel is expected to be towed to the Bahamas.

With a year plagued by severe weather and coronavirus recovery, ports and airports across North America are clamoring to stay ahead of the cargo backlogs and shipments.

Although it remains unclear when the flow of international freight will return to normalcy, the companies on the Transport Topics 2021 Top 50 Global Freight Carriers list are doing their part to ensure that cargo continues to move via ship, truck, train and aircraft.

A top officer’s errors in calculating the stability of a cargo ship loaded with nearly 4,200 automobiles likely caused the giant vessel to overturn along the Georgia coast, U.S. investigators said in a report Sept. 14.

Robust demand for shipping goods across the world’s oceans shows no signs of slowing down, the chief executive of Germany’s largest container carrier said, signaling that elevated rates in the tight market for seaborne cargo may extend into the second half of the year.

Four Japanese companies have teamed to build the world’s first zero-emission tanker by mid-2021 that will be powered by large-capacity batteries and will operate in Tokyo Bay, according to a statement Aug. 6.

Not enough low-sulfur fuel oil is available to replace the fuels used by marine shippers ahead of a fast-approaching regulation, according to analysis by Wood Mackenzie.

Some of the world’s most conservative companies are starting to experiment with cleaner fuels and cutting-edge technologies to meet new standards starting next year that mandate steep cuts of sulfur emissions from oceangoing ships.

The International Maritime Organization rejected a proposal — supported by both the U.S. and shipping groups — for a phased start to rules that will limit the sulfur content of ship fuels starting in 2020.

Florida’s Port Everglades set a record for containerized cargo volumes for fiscal 2017 ending Sept. 30, reporting 1,076,893 TEUs, the standard 20-foot-equivalent container units, a 4% increase from fiscal 2016.