Tracking Shipments
Statistics & Incidents
What each chart on the Statistics page shows, and how incidents such as delays, rollovers and customs holds are counted by carrier, forwarder and supplier.
6 min readPublished
Goal
Read the Statistics page with confidence: know what each chart counts, and see which carriers, forwarders and suppliers cause the most trouble.
Before you start
- Nothing to configure. The page is built from the shipments you already track. Open Statistics in the sidebar.
- Any member can see it.
- The period is set at the top right: 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 1 year. The current month counts as one, so “6 months” in October starts in May.
What the page shows
Every figure covers the approved shipments created in the chosen period, archived ones included. A shipment belongs to the month it was created in, not the month it sailed or arrived.
| Chart | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Shipment counts | Shipments per month, split into ocean and air |
| Shipments by produce | Shipments per produce type per month. The top 8 produce types are drawn |
| Shipments by supplier | The same chart for organizations that ship general goods, split by supplier instead of produce. Top 8 suppliers. Shipments with no known supplier are left out |
| Frequently used carriers | Your carriers by share of shipments. Spellings of one line, such as “MSC” and “Mediterranean Shipping Company”, count as one |
| Frequently used routes and Route network | The 10 busiest port-to-port routes, as bars and as a flow diagram |
| Lateness by carrier and by route | Arrivals on time, 0–5 days late and more than 5 days late, against the original ETA. Only shipments with a confirmed arrival are included |
| Dwell time by destination | Median days containers sit in the destination port between discharge and gate-out |
| Schedule reliability | The share of confirmed arrivals on or before the original ETA, per month |
| CO₂ emissions per month | Tonnes of CO₂ from tracked ocean and air shipments |
| Export and import countries | Maps of where your shipments come from and go to |
| Incidents | What went wrong, described below |
Incidents
An incident is something that went wrong with a shipment and that Trackberry has a record of. There is nothing to enter by hand: incidents are worked out from the history Trackberry already keeps, every time you open the page. The section shows a summary, a monthly chart by type, three small tables (by carrier, by forwarder and by supplier) and the ten shipments with the most incidents.
The five types
| Type | It counts when | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| Delay | The shipment arrived, or is already known to arrive, more than 48 hours after its original ETA | At most once per shipment |
| Rollover | A container was moved to a later sailing and the carrier’s plan now shows a different ship or voyage | Once per sailing change |
| Free time breach | The demurrage free time reached its last free day | Once per shipment |
| Document error | A correction was reported on one of the shipment’s documents | Once per correction |
| Customs hold | An email reported an inspection, or a customs update with a warning | Once per shipment |
Delay. The arrival is the confirmed arrival at the destination port when the carrier has reported it. If the shipment is still on its way, the current ETA is used, but only when it is already more than 48 hours after the original ETA, so a shipment at sea that is known to be late counts today. A shipment with no original ETA is never a delay.
Rollover. Trackberry records a rollover when a container’s planned sailing comes back on a different ship or voyage and now leaves at least 5 days later. A departure that merely slipped, where the earlier ship was never recorded, is not counted, because the cargo may just have sailed late and a late arrival already shows as a delay. Neither is a change of ship with the cargo leaving on time (a vessel swap). When several containers of one shipment are moved together, or the same move was recorded twice with the ship’s name spelled differently, that is one rollover. A container rolled a second time onto another ship or voyage is a second rollover.
Free time breach. The daily free time check records a shipment’s demurrage clock on the last free day itself, the day before charges start to accrue. That one record is the incident, whatever the number of containers. Detention is not checked, so it does not count. See Demurrage & Free Time. A clock found already more than 2 days overdue the first time Trackberry looked, for instance because the free days were entered late, is not recorded and so is not counted.
Document error. Every correction raised from a shipment counts, whatever became of it: open, requested, corrected, closed or waived. The error happened even if you chose to live with it. A correction withdrawn because it was reported by mistake does not count. See Document Corrections.
Customs hold. A shipment has a customs hold when it received an email that Trackberry read as an inspection notice, or a customs update it read as a warning or as critical. A routine customs update does not count. Several emails about one hold are still one hold, so a shipment has at most one. Emails held for review because the sender is not trusted are ignored until a member releases them. See Receiving Documents by Email.
Which month an incident falls in
An incident is counted in the month its shipment was created, the same rule as every other chart on the page. A free time breach in October on a shipment created in August adds to August. Because incidents keep arriving after a shipment is created, the most recent months are still filling in.
Reading the tables
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Shipments | All shipments of that carrier, forwarder or supplier in the period, with or without incidents |
| Incidents | Incidents on those shipments, of all five types |
| Per 100 | Incidents divided by shipments, times 100, rounded to one decimal |
A rate of 25 means one incident for every four shipments. One shipment can have several incidents, so a rate can pass 100. A forwarder with shipments and no incidents shows a rate of 0.
Each table lists the 10 names with the most incidents, then the most shipments. Carriers come from the carrier name in the tracking data, with spellings of one line merged. Forwarders and suppliers are the companies linked to the shipment. A shipment with no carrier, forwarder or supplier is in the summary and the monthly chart but in none of the tables. Two companies with similar names are separate rows, because they are separate companies.
What is not counted
- Failed quality checks, such as a packing list quantity that disagrees with the invoice. Checks are not kept as history yet, so they cannot be counted back in time.
- Reefer temperature excursions. Trackberry does not record them.
- Incidents entered by hand. There is no way to log one yet.
- Changes seen before tracking began. A rollover that happened before Trackberry stored the first plan for a container leaves no trace.
The same figures for Power BI
The KPI feed carries these numbers as rows, computed by the same code as the
page: incidents by month and type, and for each of carrier, forwarder and
supplier incidents_by_<dimension>, shipments_with_incidents_by_<dimension>
and incident_rate_by_<dimension>. See
BI feeds in the Trackberry API guide.