Half of Cebu's Cargo Rolls On and Off on Wheels

Stand at a Cebu pier and you will not see many cranes lifting boxes. You will see trucks. Long lines of them, driving straight onto a ferry, then driving off at the other island.

That picture surprised me. So I went looking for the numbers behind it.

Where the Data Came From

The Cebu Port Authority publishes open data on what moves through its ports. I took three years of it, 2022 to 2024, covering cargo, containers, passengers, and ship visits.

Then I added a map. I pulled 82,888 road pieces from OpenStreetMap and cut them to Cebu Province. Because cargo that lands at a pier still has to get somewhere by truck.

Cebu's ports are split into 9 offices. Each one handles a different mix. I looked at all nine.

Rolling Cargo Rules Everything

Here is the finding that reframed the whole project.

RoRo cargo is 55.8% of everything. RoRo means roll-on, roll-off. Trucks and cars drive onto the ship themselves. Nobody lifts them. Nobody packs them into a steel box.

Everything else is smaller. Bulk cargo, the loose stuff poured into a hold, is 19.0%. Containers are 16.7%. Breakbulk, the odd-shaped items, is 8.5%.

So Cebu is a truck port first and a container port second. If you plan for cranes, you have planned for the wrong thing.

Mostly Between Our Own Islands

About 79% of the cargo never leaves the country. It moves from one Philippine island to another. Only 21% is foreign trade.

And the foreign part is lopsided. For every ton Cebu sends abroad, almost ten tons arrive.

That ratio has a practical cost. Empty containers pile up. Someone has to ship them back out, and moving empty boxes earns nobody anything.

Three Terminals Carry the Boxes

Containers are not spread around. Three terminals handle 92% of them: Cebu International Port, Pier 4, and Pier 1.

That is a thin margin for error. If one of those three jams up, the schedule slips across the whole system.

Cargo by weight sits somewhere else entirely. PMO Argao and PMO Toledo together move 37% of all tons, mostly bulk and rolling cargo, far from the city piers.

People Came Back

Ferry passengers jumped from 14.9 million in 2022 to 19.6 million in 2024. That is 31% in two years.

So travel did not just heal after the pandemic. It went past where it was.

Ship visits grew 31% too. But cargo only grew 8.4%. More ships, carrying less each. That is worth watching.

The Roads Are the Weak Link

Now the map part. Cebu Province has 82,888 road pieces in OpenStreetMap.

But most are small. Residential streets. Service lanes. Only about 6,800 are tertiary grade or better, which is the level a loaded truck really wants.

So the ports keep growing, and the roads behind them are thin. A pier can only work as well as the road leaving it.

What I'd Do Differently

I would love truck counts on those roads. Right now I know which roads could carry freight. I do not know which ones actually do.

I would also like to follow one shipment end to end. From the ship, onto a truck, out to a town. That would show where the real delays live.

One honest limit: OpenStreetMap is drawn by volunteers. City roads are mapped well. Far provincial roads may be missing or out of date. So treat 8.2% as a good estimate, not an exact count.