Middle East landbridge costs soar as demand exceeds supply four/five-fold

Photo: © | Dreamstime.com By Gavin van Marle 24/04/2026 Middle East landbridge solutions to fulfil container supply chains into markets cut off from shipping due to the Hormuz closure are buckling under massive demand. According to Loadstar sources, trucking rates from Jeddah to the UAE are now four-to-five times higher than before the outbreak of the conflict, as importers across the GCC countries turn to overland routes from Khor Fakkan, Salalah and Jeddah to maintain container supply chains However, with both the UAE port of Khor Fakkan and Oman’s Salalah having come under Iranian missile attack, Saudia Arabia’s Red Sea port of Jeddah remains the safest option to dock ships. One local source in Jeddah said demand for road freight capacity this week reached a point where it was some four-to-five times supply, which was leading to “crazy prices being paid for transportation”. Current quotations for a truck from Jeddah to Jebel Ali, which pre-war had hovered at around Riyal4,000 ($1,066), were now at between Riyal18,000 and Riyal21,000 As result, container carriers have begun to dampen shipper and LSP hopes that the landbridges represent a suitable workaround the blockade. “While landbridge solutions have been sought with the aim of moving landed units to an exit port – Oman (Salalah) and Saudi (Jeddah) – there is very limited long-haul capacity available, and at prohibitively high cost, so not a scalable and feasible option in the current conditions,” a Maersk customer advisory said yesterday. Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen told journalists yesterday the new landbridges could only offer a partial respite for shippers. “And as far as the supply to places like Dubai and further north, there are various landbridges being operated by multiple people, and those probably have a bit more capacity than was initially feared; but they clearly also have a lot less capacity than is structurally needed,” he said. However, he also added that the vast majority of cargo on Hapag-Lloyd vessels and affected by the conflict had been resolved. “I know we said we would work with people to try and get those boxes to where they needed to be, even if that’s a very big effort for us and also involves extra cost for customers, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised about how constructive that has been,” he said. “If we look at where we are today, about 92% of the cargo that was stuck now has a very clear plan on where it needs to go, and in most cases, also a delivery day. “I think that’s actually gone a little bit smoother than we probably feared in the beginning,” he added. Inside the industry’s AI shift Complete The Loadstar’s ‘State of AI in the Supply Chain’ survey — and receive the full report and data before release. Take the 2-min survey

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• April 25th, 2026
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