In news you just couldn’t make up, an Evergreen container was seen at a 45-degree angle blocking a Taiwanese highway. The image drew instant comparisons to the Ever Given ship, which bears a visual parallel as it made headlines blocking the Suez Canal, disrupting an estimated 12% of daily global trade.
Although both the container and the ship proudly display the Evergreen name, the company is only responsible for sea freight. So it would be a little unfair to blame the company for the incident in Taiwan. Confirming to the China Times, Evergreen stated that they do not operate a trailer business in Mainland China and are only responsible for transportation by sea.
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Of course, that didn’t stop internet users and meme-makers the world over from jumping on the similarity of the two situations. Using images that appear to have been captured from CCTV, they spread across social media site Weibo, before being shared across the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The angle of both the container truck and the Ever Given ship is remarkably similar, regardless of the text scrawled across the side of both.
#BREAKING As the sun rises in Egypt, so too does the Ever Given. Six days after getting stuck bystander video shows the container ship once again floating. pic.twitter.com/Cv7vFTuBy3
— Mackay Taggart (@mackaytaggart) March 29, 2021
We assume that the accident, which blocked traffic on the Changchun-Shenzhen Expressway, would have taken considerably less time to mop-up than the headline-making jam caused by the “Ever Given” drifting into the banks of the Suez at a 45-degree angle. The Japanese-owned, Taiwanese-operated, Panama-registered, and Indian-crewed ship has only just been freed and refloated. The beaching of the vessel caused six days of disruption to global trade. According to the BBC, German insurer Allianz said its analysis showed the blockage could cost international trade between $6bn to $10bn per week.
However, it is hoped that normality will resume soon, as the Ever Given has been refloated, as is reportedly being removed from the canal.