As logistics crisis of Hanjin Shipping lengthens, the toll on cargoes and crew on vessels stranded at sea as well as its clients around the world due to delays and possible ruins in their products is getting bigger and bigger.

More than 40 vessels of Hanjin Shipping cannot dock in fear of losing the ships and cargoes to creditors.

Sources say the vessels are struggling to save fuel as a containership typically uses up 100 tons of fuel a day for engine propulsion and power generation although some variance exists depending on vessel size and cargo volume.

Vessels that carry perishables consume more fuel to keep them chilled and frozen.

Any shipping delay will be especially detrimental to food freight owners because food past the shelf life would have to discarded, said Cha Mi-sung, vice president of Korea International Freight Forwarders Association.

Conditions onboard are getting tougher for the crew. A captain of a ship told the Wall Street Journal that his crew was trying to get by without air conditioning despite the heat to save power.

Some companies fretting over state of their cargoes have taken matters in their own hands but only to be upset by various hurdles due to different set of rules in different jurisdictions.

Samsung Electronics last Thursday filed a petition to a U.S. bankruptcy court, offering to pay the overdue port service fees for their cargoes on behalf of Hanjin Shipping. The U.S. court issued stay order to protect Hanjin Shipping cargoes at U.S. ports. But the situation remains in a stalemate in ports elsewhere around the world.

For smaller cargo owners, the matter is not as simple as paying the port service providers as Samsung Electronics has done to recover and unload its cargoes. It is not easy for them to track their cargoes and also find them from a bulky container.

“It is almost impossible to find specific cargoes and get them out of a packed container box,” one industry official said.

The matter would get more complicated and beyond control if ship owners get involved in the crisis for cargo owners and shipping companies. The ship owners that charter carriers to shippers have the right called cargo lien, or claim to the properties onboard. The fate of cargoes will become more uncertain if any of the ship owners exercise the right over the company in court administration.