Glossary · Schedules & routing
ETA vs ETD on a perishable shipment
Also known as ETA, ETD, ATA, and ATD.
What each one actually predicts, how much to trust it, and why planning a cold store slot against a six-week-old ETA is how produce importers lose days.
Published
You sold this fruit against a date. The cold store is booked, the haulier is booked, and the customer is expecting it in week 34. All of that rests on an ETA — which is an estimate, revised without warning, and not a commitment by anyone.
What a slipped ETA costs is covered in transit time is shelf life. This is what the two terms mean.
ETD — estimated time of departure — is when the vessel is expected to sail. ETA — estimated time of arrival — is when it is expected to reach the discharge port. Neither appears in the contract of carriage as a promise.
You will also meet the actuals: ATD and ATA, departure and arrival as they really happened. Those are facts. Everything else is a forecast, and for perishables the gap between the two is where money goes.
How much to trust an ETA
An ETA’s reliability decays with distance from the event:
| Horizon | What it really is |
|---|---|
| At booking, six weeks out | A schedule — the service’s published rotation |
| Two weeks out | An estimate that has survived departure |
| Two days out | Close to a fact |
| In port, berthed | A fact |
The mistake that costs money is treating the first row like the last one. A six-week-old ETA is a plan, and planning your haulage, cold store slot and customer commitments against it as though it were a date is how a delay becomes a crisis.
Watch the movement, not the value
The most useful signal an ETA gives is not its value but its history — why does my ETA keep changing? goes through which movements deserve a decision and which are noise. An ETA that has slipped three times in a week will slip again — that pattern is visible long before the final delay is, and it is far more actionable than the current number.
Trackberry keeps ETA revisions for exactly this reason, and a repeatedly slipping ETA raises a monitoring alert rather than waiting for the date to pass.
The ETA that matters is your container’s
After a transshipment, the vessel’s ETA and your container’s ETA are different numbers. If the box misses its connection it waits for the next service while the original vessel arrives exactly on time. Tracking the vessel tells you nothing at that point.
ETD matters more than importers think
A late departure is the earliest reliable warning you will get. Nothing downstream recovers time — a vessel that sails two days late arrives at least two days late, and the free time you had planned around moves with it.
FAQ
What is the difference between ETA and ATA?
ETA is estimated — a forecast that changes. ATA is actual — the recorded time the vessel arrived. Only the actual matters for demurrage, because free time starts at discharge, not at the ETA you were quoted.
Why does my ETA keep changing?
Because it is recalculated as conditions change: weather, port congestion, berth availability, slow steaming to save fuel, or a missed connection at a hub. Frequent revision is normal; a pattern of revisions in one direction is a warning.
Does free time start at the ETA?
No — at discharge from the vessel. A vessel arriving three days early gives you three fewer days than the ETA implied, which is why the discharge event matters more than the forecast once a container is close.
Should I plan haulage against the ETA?
Book provisionally against it, confirm against the discharge event. Committing a haulier and a cold store slot to a six-week-old ETA is how importers end up paying for both a missed slot and demurrage.