2025 Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference Breakbulk & Project Cargo
Heavy haul permitting processes and wait times vary widely from state to state, Breakbulk25 speakers said. Tracie Morris Schaefer
Pardon the interruption
Trade policy headwinds haven’ t dampened project optimism
By Eric Johnson
The more you know...
The panelists also underscored the importance of early engagement with engineering, procurement and construction companies, in part to address permitting delays.
Liewald estimated that logistics providers spend roughly 30 % of their time studying future projects to ensure proper execution.
“ Doing studies is a major part of what we do,” he said.“ Can we get the equipment there? How? What does it take? What kind of routing? The more information we have from the client, and the more time that we have, the better quality we can provide back.”
Rondon noted that ongoing education to understand changing cargo sizes is also important.
“ We’ re constantly having to educate our engineers to understand all the needs that we have on the logistics side, just to better provide support to the projects and ultimately achieve what they’ re trying to achieve,” he said.
Amid these challenges, the panelists agreed that the outlook for the project cargo sector remains robust, thanks to increasing demand for traditional and renewable energy and infrastructure.
“ We’ re coming off our best year in terms of business, and we have our largest backlog ever, so for us, heavy hauling in the US looks very strong,” Rondon said.“ Demand for manufacturing components keeps getting bigger and bigger; we’ re not seeing any slowdown.”
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Large energy projects that had been paused due to tariff concerns could lead to a robust second half of 2025 for the project cargo sector, particularly if the temporary deescalation of the US – China trade war evolves into a more permanent tariff truce.
“ With existing projects, we’ re not seeing much impact. They’ re being executed,” Jake Swanson, regional vice president of DHL Industrial Projects, told the Journal of Commerce’ s 2025 Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference( Breakbulk25) in April, prior to the May 12 announcement that the US and China would significantly reduce reciprocal tariffs imposed over the previous month for at least 90 days to negotiate.“ But new projects, especially high-value ones, we’ ve seen a slowdown, or a pause.
“ There’ s just general uneasiness, and we’ ve noticed that in terms of the [ requests for quotes ] we’ re seeing,” he added.
“ Existing projects are being executed. But new projects, especially high-value ones, we’ ve seen a slowdown, or a pause.”
Swanson said activity around smaller and medium-sized projects that are less capital-intensive is still strong and that there is optimism for the second half of 2025, when much of the activity currently on pause may unlock.
“ Hopefully, it’ s not just wishful thinking,” he said.“ Maybe some of the bigger projects will fall into the second half of the year and solutions will be found to some of these questions around sourcing due to the tariffs.”
Shippers also said they are less worried about planned fees on Chinese-operated and-built ships calling US ports from the US Trade Representative( USTR). A significant portion of the fleet serving project shippers would be exempt from the heaviest levies on Chinese ships, according to the latest version of the USTR fee structure.
“ We dodged a bullet with regard to the Chinese vessel port tax,” said Bob Drew, director of chartering and operations for Tata International Metals( Americas).“ Most of what we use fits within two of the exception categories.”
June 2025 | Journal of Commerce 11