NYSHEX Knowledge Base

How to Know If Your Ocean Freight Rate Is Competitive

Most shippers believe their ocean freight rates are competitive. Most of them are wrong. Not because they negotiated badly, but because they have no reliable way to check.

Ocean Freight Procurement Tools: What Leading Shippers Are Using in 2026

Ocean Freight Rate Benchmarking: A Practical Guide

Most procurement teams benchmark their ocean freight rates once a year during tender season. They compare carrier bids against each other, negotiate toward a number that looks comp...

How to Audit Your Ocean Freight Invoices

Your freight invoice should be predictable. You have a contract. You know your lanes. You know your carrier. The number at the bottom should not surprise you. If it does, you are n...

Ocean Freight Indices Explained: SCFI, WCI, FBX, NYFI and How to Choose the Right One

The previous piece in this series made the case for index-linked contracts as a structural solution to the floating surcharge problem and the behavioral breakdown that fixed-rate c...

Index-Linked Contracts in Ocean Freight: What They Are and How They Work

If you read our previous piece on ocean freight surcharges, you already know that a fixed-rate contract is not actually fixed. The base rate may be locked, but fuel surcharges floa...

How to Read an Ocean Freight Quote

An ocean freight quote is not a single number. It is a collection of charges that together represent the total cost of moving your cargo from origin to destination, and the way tho...

Why Did My Ocean Freight Rate Go Up?

You opened your freight invoice and the number was higher than expected. Maybe significantly higher. Your contracted rate looked the same, but the total was not. Or your forwarder/...

Ocean Freight Surcharges: Complete List and What Each One Means

Ocean freight pricing is never just a base rate. Every shipment carries a stack of additional charges layered on top of the core freight rate, each one designed to recover a specif...