Your intuition is correct. It works because in the absence of globaldata the globaldatastatement remains blank.
As Carl noted, I posted the more substantial fix with the PTSS, and it’s freely downloadable by anyone as the report is not marked as private. The “simple” fix is only for those who prefer not to make substantial changes to the shipping TPW’s - they can make the simple change, or download the modified ABOOP.TPW from the PTSS report.
Thank you, Bruce. I’m certainly happy to save time here.