Not only does some breakbulk and project cargo require specialized equipment to handle oversized and overweight shipments, but they are also more labor intensive than containerized cargo.

In a world of rectangular boxes, the round peg-or the big, lumpy, awkwardly shaped product-has a hard time fitting in-unless it can go in a box itself.

Once the dominant method of moving goods over land and water, breakbulk shipping appears to be slowly, steadily sliding towards extinction worldwide. It's even getting harder and harder to find people in the general transportation industry who have actually heard of the term.

In general, breakbulk cargo is anything that can't be sucked out of a ship with a vacuum or placed in a steel container box. Though the breakbulk market has declined steadily in recent years, it still accounts for plenty of goods, starting with perishables and also including giant rolls of newsprint and plate steel, some types of lumber and wood products and even rebar.

Yet in each of these areas, when it comes to global transport, breakbulk seems to be losing ground rather than gaining it. "What we've seen in the past few years, just generally speaking, is that the container shippers got a lot more competitive in their rates and a lot of traditional breakbulk cargoes that were palletized changed mode from breakbulk to containerized," says Jim Pedersen, vice president of marketing at Seattle-based Stevedoring Services of America.

Steel is one example of a commodity that is moving in boxes instead of breakbulk, says Nancy Gravatt, a spokeswoman for the American Iron and Steel Institute. "Most steel products that we ship do fit within those containers," she says, speaking of conventional boxes. "Even coils fit within those containers," she says, referring to the huge rolls of steel that are key industry product. "You can fit about 20 of those coils within a single container."

Signs are that the trend is gathering momentum, at least when it comes to the global marketplace, experts say. "There's a lot more cargo moving to containers," agrees Jeff Allen, general manager of Mid-Florida Freezer Inc., a Cape Canaveral, Florida-based company that moves a wide variety of different breakbulk products.

A demanding intermodal marketplace is one reason for the shift away from breakbulk. Shippers want to get their containers off of ships and to the marketplace as fast as possible. Unless ports and other facilities are capable of moving with unprecedented speed, breakbulk simply can't supply the efficiency today's accelerated supply chains demand.

One of the areas where the shift from breakbulk is most pronounced is in the perishables sector. Not long ago, breakbulk ships ruled the perishables market. Virtually all product moved in vast, refrigerated vessels stacked on carefully arranged pallets.

Today, more and more perishable goods are moving via refrigerated containers. "The reefer fleet now provides around 40 percent of nominal reefer capacity," says a recently published report by London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants. Refrigerated containers moving on conventional containerized vessels make up the other 60 percent, the company says.

Volume is declining to the point where the total size of the perishable industry breakbulk fleet is shrinking. "By end-2002, the reefer fleet numbered 1,253 ships with a combined capacity of 348.9 million cubic feet," a smaller number than in years before, Drewry says. Additionally, the global reefer fleet is developing a "mid-age" profile, with the average ship more than 20 years old.

In some ways, bad news for the reefer industry turned out to be good news for perishables shippers. A slow economy and overcapacity translated into bargain rates in recent years, Drewry says.

"In the past two-three years, the freight market has not been kind to reefer shipowners. The future is not without hope, however, but the continued incursions from the reefer box sector mean the reefer market is no longer in full control of its own destiny," notes Drewry.

Not all the news is bad in the world of breakbulk. Market difficulties for one sector can prove to be opportunities for others, and that's what some say is happening with breakbulk. In areas where a sizeable infrastructure and sophisticated technology are needed, breakbulk traffic remains strong.

"I think they'll stay breakbulk for the foreseeable future," says Allen of his newsprint traffic. A single roll of newsprint takes up four feet by four feet and weighs 2,200 to 2,300 pounds, he says. One ship can carry 8,000 tons of newsprint. Specialized equipment is needed to handle the goods with any kind of efficiency-which means that the ports and service providers that are willing to invest in those services will have a chance to profit.

That's the philosophy of ports on both sides of America. "A lot of terminal operations are pushing out their breakbulk accounts to serve their container accounts," says said Ron Popham, who was recently hired as a senior manager in San Diego's maritime marketing department in good part because of his expertise with specialty cargoes.

"Container space is more valuable than breakbulk space" for these operators, he says, pointing to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as examples. "That's a niche we have down here-that's the kind of cargo we love to handle-our labor is used to breakbulk," Popham says.

One reason for San Diego's expertise is that much of the 100,000 tons of perishables the port handles every year comes in as breakbulk cargo. An additional 30,000 tons of newsprint for the local paper also arrive as breakbulk cargo, Popham says.

By focusing on a relatively neglected market segment, San Diego stands to gain a considerable amount of new business, he adds. The port is already in negotiations with a breakbulk shipper that is currently based in Los Angeles, but who has lost its lease. "They are currently at Long Beach, and they're interested in coming here. They're losing their lease at Long Beach," Popham says.

Port Canaveral, Florida, is another facility that is prospering because of its dedication to a specific niche, says Lauren Kotas, director of marketing and trade development. "We've been doing breakbulk for 50 years and we plan on doing it for the next 50," she says.

Getting traffic of any kind isn't easy, and ports had better be prepared to invest large amounts of time and energy if they want to go anywhere when it comes to breakbulk products, Kotas says. "Unless you do that, you're really going to lose your market to containers," she says.

"You really have to show that there is zero damage, and that you are efficient and cost-effective," Kotas says. Shippers are looking for facilities that both have high level of expertise and that are willing to invest in specialized technologies. Canaveral has installed a special system of trams for moving newsprint that has significantly increased the port's volume, she says.

Many cargoes are also simply not suited for containerization, Kotas says. Some ingots are so heavy that just a few of them will fill a container beyond its legal weight, leading to huge amounts of legal space. Some of the breakbulk building products that are constantly coming into Canaveral are simply too large to fit into a conventional container.

"Those rods are way too long," Kotas says of the rebar that comes into the port by the tens of thousands of tons. "It would look like a foot-long hot dog on a little bun," she says. In many cases, it is also more cost-effective for a shipper to charter an entire vessel and load it up with a single product than it is to rely on a containerized carrier that has to make myriad different stops.

Indeed, some carriers such as Westwood, a subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser, making their living focused on specific products such as newsprint. "That's specialized and they have a lot of technology devoted to it," says Pederson.

It's far too soon to be writing obituaries for breakbulk though, remarks Kotas. The reality is that breakbulk volume is growing nationwide by about 3 percent-a paltry rate compared to conventional cargo, which in many ports is soaring at 10 percent or more, but enough to make for a satisfactory business for both ports and shippers.

In the end, Kotas says, it's all about money. "It's price driven. Things go in cycles," she says. The forces that have driven Florida grapefruits into containers are also the ones that will push them back onto bulk cargo ships, she says.

Such a situation may be emerging in the steel shipment arena, says Noyan Konnolu, general manager of online market site Steelvillage.com. "Transportation costs are rising," he says. Those increases may wind up forcing an industry that has shifted very much to containers to look at breakbulk again, he says.