Cargo Airships Are Happening

The (biggest) problem that keeps airships from practical use is that they are huge sails. Big sails mean even small amounts of wind can be powerful forces acting on the airship. In the air a big push from the wind might be safely managed, but if you're near anything solid such as the ground, you can get smashed to bits.

To safely operate a suitably efficient (large) airship, we'd need both huge specialized docks with extremely strong mooring structures to keep wind from smashing the airship into whatever is near it, and a system (such as a 3-axis propulsion system on the airship) that is capable of counteracting wind force acting on the airship when it's near the ground or other solid objects and not docked.

Despite the many attractive advantages of airships, there's yet been anything like a good solution to this problem. There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?), this is just the biggest.

I think if that was the biggest problem, they'd be used much more. There are a lot of places with light and regular winds, and we're also pretty good at predicting winds in the 1 day forward timescale. And of course there's the regular and predictable high winds that were traditionally used by sail ships.

The article is talking about atlantic freight trips - middle of the ocean is not one of those places with light winds.

"Hindenburg made 17 round trips across the Atlantic in 1936 — its first and only full year of service — with ten trips to the United States and seven to Brazil."

A modern ship can make the same number of trips and not be dependent on weather at all.

... with unsustainable CO2 emissions. We need to be ramping down fossils use rapidly.