China’s National Day holiday runs October 1–7, 2026. Factories and feeder moves slow before those dates. Drewry’s September 24 World Container Index note counted 15 Transpacific blank sailings for the week of September 28, up from nine in the week of September 21. Drewry still expected rates to ease once the holiday started, because demand drops.
The principle: a canceled sailing is a fit problem before it is a rate problem. The cartons you already built may not match the ship that is still running.
This note is for the person who pays for the container and has to rebuild the load. It is not a carrier schedule. It is not a forecast of the October rate.
What a blank changes on the floor
A blank sailing removes one departure. The cargo stays. The usual results:
- The booking rolls to a later vessel, often with a different cutoff.
- The forwarder offers a different service, sometimes a different port pair.
- Part of the order ships and part waits, so one planned container becomes two smaller ones.
- The equipment type changes. A 40-foot high cube assumed on Monday may not be the box offered on Thursday.
A 1 percent move in the global average rate does not answer any of those. Carton count, dimensions, and weight do. You need to know what still fits in the box you can actually get.
Do the work while the blank is only announced
Run this sequence before the sailing is canceled on your booking.
- Freeze the carton file. One row per SKU: length, width, height, unit weight, and quantity for this shipment. Re-typing dims during a cutoff is how a case stays on the dock.
- Run the plan against the container you were promised. Record utilization and the leftovers. The leftover list is the first thing you need if the sailing blanks.
- Run a second plan for the fallback. If the alternate is a standard 40-foot instead of a high cube, or two 20-foot boxes instead of one 40-foot, you want that fit before the forwarder calls. The second plan is the same cargo in a different box.
- Mark what cannot split. Hazmat, a retail set that must arrive together, or one lot code should be flagged before someone peels off a pallet.
- Tie the plan to the booking number. When the sailing ID changes, the plan changes with it. A PDF attached to a dead voyage is how the warehouse builds the wrong container.
Palletizr’s calculator is steps 2 and 3. Enter the cartons once. Optimize for space if the forwarder has not sent the new rate. Add the rate when it arrives and compare cost per carton across the plans that still fit. Open the calculator.
The index is not the rate on the booking
Drewry’s September 24 composite was $4,468 per 40-foot container, down 1 percent. Shanghai–Los Angeles was $7,838. Shanghai–New York was $10,373. Those are lane indexes. They are not the number on your booking confirmation.
If you type the index into a load plan, you will rank the wrong container whenever the all-in quote includes fuel, a canal charge, or a holiday premium the index does not. Type the number the forwarder offered. If that number is missing, optimize for space and leave the price step blank.
Packing does not change a duty rate. If the real question is whether goods clear before a tariff date, that question belongs to the broker. Cube changes how many containers you need and what each one costs to move.
The test
You are ready for a blank when you can answer three questions without a new spreadsheet:
- Which cartons are on this booking, with dims that match the goods?
- What still fits if the high cube becomes a standard 40-foot?
- Which plan do you book once the replacement rate arrives?
If the answer is “we will figure it out at the terminal,” the blank will cost more than the rate move. Golden Week starts October 1. Freeze the load file before the last feeder cutoff.
After October 1
Drewry’s September 24 note expected Transpacific rates to ease once Golden Week was underway, even with the extra blanks, because holiday demand drops. Returning Suez capacity is an Asia–Europe point in that same note. It is not a reason the Pacific softens. Keep the carton file either way. The fallback plan is the point.
Cargo that misses the last pre-holiday sailing still has to fit the box offered in the week of October 5. A plan saved against two container types is reusable. A verbal “it should fit” is not. When bookings reopen, price the plans you already ran. Do not rebuild dims from memory because the first voyage number expired.