The shipping industry is crucial for global economic activity and shipping freight rates have been shown to be related to product prices, commodity and oil prices, and stock markets. This study investigates the effect of various types of uncertainty on different shipping freight rates in a global setting, employing a very large data set and a comprehensive set of uncertainty variables. Overall, our results show that uncertainty has a negative effect on shipping freight rates, however, the impact is not homogeneous across different freight rates and across different uncertainty types. For instance, Trade Policy Uncertainty and Climate Policy Uncertainty seem to have a very small effect on shipping freight rates, LPG rates seem to be virtually unaffected by all types of uncertainty, DRY, CAPESIZE, and PANAMAX freight rates seem to be affected by Energy Uncertainty, Climate Risk, and Global Economic Policy Uncertainty only.