Bulk Carriers

Bulk carriers are vessels designed to transport loose bulk cargo. In particular, IHS/Fairplay specifies that bulk carriers are single-deck vessels "with an with an arrangement of topside ballast tanks for the carriage of bulk dry cargo of a homogeneous nature." Bulkers (for both dry and liquid cargoes) make up a large proportion of the world's merchant fleet, but these ships generally do not operate on regular schedules, so relatively few appear in the JOC Sailings vessel directory. A subset of bulk carriers, "lakers," serves on the Great Lakes in North America. For other types of bulkers, see cement carriers, open hatch bulk carriers, and tankers.