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OMAHA, Neb. — About 1,000 engineers and conductors who work for Norfolk Southern soon will be able to report safety concerns anonymously through a federal system without fear of discipline.

With the Red Sea crisis roiling shipments of everything from cars to energy, it’s a matter of time before soaring costs and supply chain strains show up in companies’ earnings reports.

Chaos in the Red Sea is starting to disrupt shipments of produce from coffee to fruit — and threatening to halt a slowdown in food inflation that brought some relief to strained consumers.

The CEOs of two leading freight carriers said they expect Red Sea threats to disrupt shipping for weeks or months longer.

The attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels have rerouted most of the trade normally flowing through the crucial maritime artery for consumer goods and energy supplies.

A militant group that is attacking container vessels along the Suez Canal in Egypt is causing shipment disruptions that threaten to inflict downstream effects on the U.S. trucking sector.

Container shipping is set to face a crunch ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea restrict capacity, a major industry consultant said. 

A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S plans to continue diverting ships away from the Red Sea “for the foreseeable future” after pausing transits earlier this week to assess the situation.

Short-term rates for container shipping between Asia, Europe and the U.S. are climbing on reduced capacity caused by the threats to cargo vessels in the Red Sea.