panama canal, that the average wait to transit can top 12 days. here s another. the biggest cargo ships that can go through the panama canal are called panamax. each ship can carry 4,500 shipping containers but there are newer bigger ships called post-pannamax. they can hold more than 18,000 containers, that s four times the capacity of a panamax ship. here s what 18,000 containers would look like stacked in times square. higher than many of the buildings beside. the first will be delivered on june 28th. these ships obviously have to find other routes since the panama canal cannot accommodate them and that is exactly what they re doing. in the meantime, panama is frantically trying to revamp its canal to accommodate bigger ships, but it still won t be