The sight of a massive ship stacked high with containers might lead you to take for granted that somebody somewhere must know exactly how much each one weighs.
Not so, according to a shipping industry leader.
“The issue of misdeclared container weights has been a maritime safety problem for many years,” said John Butler, president and CEO of the World Shipping Council, a trade group that represents some of the biggest steamship lines internationally.
Butler, who testified before a congressional subcommittee in April, cited the case of the MSC Napoli, a container ship that suffered a catastrophic structural failure off the coast of southwest England on Jan. 18, 2007.
