Hurricane-Season Logistics: Protecting Your Supply Chain

Hurricane season runs June through November, and every year the same thing happens: cargo that could have moved in calm weather ends up stuck on a vessel, on a chassis, or on the terminal floor when a storm closes the port. The damage is rarely the wind — it is the demurrage, the missed sailings, and the scramble to clear a container that arrived the day before a warning went up.

We move freight through Nassau every week as the sole Antillean Line agent and run last-mile into the Family Islands as a DHL Express partner, so we see how storms ripple through a supply chain. The businesses that come through a bad season intact are not lucky. They planned their inventory, their clearance, and their storage before the first name was called. Here is how to do the same.

Pull inventory forward before the season peaks

The cheapest hurricane insurance is a full shelf in June. Antillean sails weekly into Nassau, but a single port closure can knock a sailing off schedule and back the next one up. If you sell anything weather-sensitive — generators, roofing, water, non-perishable food, building supplies — get it in early rather than trying to squeeze one last container through in September. Consolidating in our Pompano Beach warehouse before you ship lets you build a full container from smaller US purchases and ride out a delayed sailing without an empty shelf back home.

• Order peak-season stock by early summer, not on the first storm warning.
• Consolidate small US shipments at Pompano into one FCL to reduce the number of at-risk moves.
• Keep a documented reorder point so a two-week port delay does not become a stockout.
• Flag temperature- or moisture-sensitive cargo early so it is not sitting in a container during a closure.

Free days are the clock you actually race

When a storm delays clearance, demurrage is what quietly drains the budget. Antillean gives a dry 20ft or 40ft container seven free days; after that it runs $37 a day through day fifteen, then $150 a day from day sixteen. Reefers get only four free days and climb to $200 a day. A container that would have cleared in three days can sit for two weeks if the port shuts and the backlog clears slowly — and every one of those days is billable. Send your commercial invoices and packing lists ahead of arrival, pre-fund duty or authorize a duty advance, and watch reefer and flat-rack cargo first, since their free time is shortest and their daily rates highest. When a closure lifts, ask us to prioritize your storm-exposed boxes as the terminal reopens.

Get cargo off the port and into covered storage

The safest place for cargo during a storm is not a container yard exposed to surge — it is inside. Our 4,000 sq ft Nassau warehouse at Verizon Business Park gives you a place to destuff and hold goods off the terminal, away from the demurrage clock and off equipment you are renting by the day. Destuffing at Gladstone runs $750 per container, or $650 if we dray it to our own warehouse; pallet storage is $30 per pallet per month. Getting the box emptied and the freight racked before a warning is issued turns a high-risk exposure into a controlled hold you can draw down as you need it.

Plan the Family Islands leg around the weather, not against it

Family Islands delivery depends on ferries and mailboats, and those are the first thing to stop when weather turns. As the DHL Express last-mile partner for the islands outside Grand Bahama, we schedule around sailing windows — but the schedule only works if cargo is staged in Nassau before the window closes. Land the freight in Nassau early, let us hold it, and move it out on the first safe sailing once the weather clears. Everything is tracked in our Hammerhead TMS, so you can see exactly where a shipment sits when routes are disrupted and plan the next move on real information instead of guesswork.

None of this requires a special hurricane plan — it is ordinary good logistics done a few weeks earlier than usual. Move peak stock forward, keep documentation ahead of arrival, get cargo off the port and into covered storage, and stage Family Islands freight before the sailing window closes. To pressure-test your inventory timeline before the next system forms, reach our documentation team at documents@clxnow.com or (242) 605-0452 and we will map it out with you.