You know, a lot of things go into the exporter's final transportation costs, so it's often difficult to isolate what the specific cost elements are. But yes, there is no question that if your carrier is paying additional costs to reposition those empties, especially if they're not internalized and they're using an external provider such as the railway, those costs will in some way be passed to the exporter. Can I quantify them? No. But certainly there is a cost that will go to the exporter that they wouldn't encounter if the empties were being repositioned on the carrier's own ship.
On September 13th, 2017. See this statement in context.