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Three weeks before your cargo-ready date on mainline routes; five on anything transiting a seasonal peak.

Carriers release allocation in weekly blocks. Booking earlier than five weeks rarely helps — the space simply isn't loaded into the system yet — but booking inside ten days means you are buying from the spot pool, where rates move daily and rollover risk climbs sharply.

• Asia → North Europe: book 21 days out, 35 during Golden Week and Lunar New Year.
• Transpacific eastbound: 18 days out; allocation is released Thursdays.
• Intra-Med and short sea: 7 days is comfortable year round.

If your cargo-ready date is soft, tell us the earliest and latest dates rather than one guess. We hold flexible bookings against two sailings at no extra cost.

FCL means you pay for the whole box regardless of how full it is. LCL means you pay per cubic metre and share the box with other shippers. Groupage is our own weekly consolidation — same principle as LCL, but the co-loaders are pre-vetted and the deconsolidation happens in our warehouse rather than a third party's.

Below three cubic metres, air freight is often cheaper once you price in the deconsolidation fees and the extra fortnight of working capital tied up in transit.

Yes, free of charge until the terminal cut-off. After cut-off the container is already gated in and a change becomes a shut-out, which carries a carrier restow fee.

Amendments are made from the shipment page or by replying to the booking confirmation email. We do not charge an amendment fee on your first two changes per shipment.

We accept IMDG classes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.1, 8 and 9 on most trades. Class 1 and class 7 are outside our scope. Reefer cargo is accepted between −25 °C and +25 °C with continuous telemetry on every box.

Dangerous goods require the completed DG declaration and a valid MSDS at least five working days before cut-off. Late DG paperwork is the single most common cause of a missed sailing in our network.

Ocean freight, both terminal handling charges, bunker adjustment, and documentation. Everything else is quoted as a named line, never as a percentage.

• Included: origin THC, destination THC, BAF, B/L issuance, standard free time.
• Quoted separately: customs entry, inspection, inland haulage, insurance, storage beyond free time.
• Never charged: admin fees, fuel levies on top of BAF, or currency handling spreads.

Rates are held for fourteen days from issue on contract trades and seven days on spot. If a carrier general rate increase lands inside your validity window, we absorb it.

Demurrage is the charge for leaving a container inside the terminal past your free days. Detention is the charge for keeping it outside the terminal past your free days. They are different clocks and they can run at the same time.

Tiers escalate, they do not replace one another. A box collected on day 15 is billed five days at tier one plus three at tier two. We send an automated warning at day five and again at day seven.

Destination-country charges are always billed in the local currency because that is how the terminal and customs authority levy them. Ocean freight remains in the currency of your quote.

The conversion reference is the ECB mid-market rate on the day of vessel arrival, printed on line two of every invoice. We add no spread. If you would prefer single-currency billing, we can consolidate at month end for a flat fee of €18 per invoice.

Six documents, uploaded to the shipment page. Anything missing at the 72-hour mark triggers a call from your coordinator, not a silent rollover.

• Commercial invoice with HS codes at six digits minimum.
• Packing list with gross and net weights per carton.
• Verified gross mass declaration, signed.
• Certificate of origin, where a preference is claimed.
• Export licence, if the commodity requires one.
• Shipper's letter of instruction.

You will see the hold on the tracking page within twenty minutes of the authority raising it. Scanning adds one to two working days. A physical devanning adds three to six and costs between $380 and $1,400 depending on port and commodity.

Inspection costs are pass-through — we bill exactly what the terminal bills us and attach the original receipt. Free time does not pause during an inspection at most ports, which is why an inspection often costs more in demurrage than in inspection fees.

In the EU and the UK, yes, subject to a credit check and a signed indemnity. In the United States we cannot — CBP requires the importer of record to hold a continuous bond in its own name, and we will help you arrange one instead.

Typical set-up time is nine working days. There is no monthly fee; we charge per entry.

Positions refresh every fifteen minutes from terrestrial AIS near coastlines and roughly every three hours from satellite AIS mid-ocean. The ETA is not the carrier's published ETA — it is our own model, blending the carrier feed with berth congestion and the vessel's observed speed over the last 48 hours.

Across 2025 our arrival estimate landed within twelve hours of actual berthing on 84% of shipments. The carrier's own published ETA managed 61% over the same set.

Yes. Every account includes a REST API and signed webhooks at no extra cost. Events follow the DCSA 3.0 event taxonomy, so if your ERP already speaks to another forwarder the mapping is usually a same-day job.

Pre-built connectors exist for NetSuite, Business Central, and Odoo. Everything else goes through the generic webhook.

Photograph the container seal before you break it, then note the damage on the delivery receipt before the driver leaves.

A clean signed delivery receipt is close to fatal for a claim. Write "received damaged, subject to inspection" and have the driver countersign. Then send us the photos within three working days.

• Seal number and condition, photographed intact.
• Wide shot of the loaded container with doors open.
• Close shots of each damaged unit with a scale reference.
• Annotated delivery receipt.

Written notice must reach the carrier within three days of delivery for concealed damage and immediately for visible damage. We file on your behalf the same day we receive the pack.

Carrier liability under the Hague-Visby Rules caps at roughly two special drawing rights per kilogram — about $2.70. A pallet of electronics weighing 400 kg is therefore covered to around $1,080 no matter what it was worth.

All-risks cover runs 0.28% of invoice value plus 10%, with no deductible under $500. It is the cheapest line on most invoices and the only one that matters when something goes wrong.

A named coordinator from your first booking, plus a named backup who sits at the adjacent desk and reads the same shipment notes. You get both direct dial numbers. There is no ticket queue and no chatbot.

Median first response during working hours in Q2 2026 was eleven minutes.

New accounts start prepaid. After three completed shipments you can apply for 30-day terms; the decision takes four working days and needs two years of filed accounts plus two trade references.

Established accounts moving more than 120 TEU a year are eligible for 45-day terms and a rolling credit line reviewed each quarter.