The clocks an importer watches

An import container hits a fixed set of milestones on its way to you, and each one is a clock. Estimated time of arrival, berthing, discharge, available for pickup, the last free day and outgate. A tracking screen shows you the milestones. Knowing which congestion metric speaks to which clock is what lets you read the screen as a plan instead of a status list.

The milestone sequence

ETA is the ship's estimated arrival, the first clock and the loosest, because a vessel can sit in the offshore queue after it arrives if no berth is open. Berth is when the ship actually ties up. Discharge is when your box comes off the ship. Available is when the terminal has grounded the container and cleared it for pickup, which is not the same day as discharge in a busy yard. The last free day is the deadline to collect it before storage fees start. Outgate is the moment the box leaves the terminal on a truck or train. Each milestone closes one clock and opens the next.

Which metric lights which clock

The public numbers map onto that sequence. The ship queue speaks to the stretch before berth, whether vessels are stacking up offshore waiting for a dock. Vessel dwell, while it was published, timed the berth-to-departure window, how long the ship worked cargo. Box dwell is the available-to-outgate clock, how long the container sits in the yard before it moves, and it is the one that runs against the last free day. The truck index speaks to the drayage leg after outgate, how much longer the road trip takes than free-flow. No single feed tracks your specific box, but each metric tells you which clock is under pressure across the complex.

The clocks, read as a board

The board above rolls the offshore, road-side and volume pressure into one read per complex. Use it as a backdrop to your own container's milestones. If your box is due into a complex the board flags as congested, the clocks that tend to run long there, the pre-berth queue and the yard, are the ones to watch closest on your tracking screen. If the complex is flowing, the milestones are more likely to click over on schedule. The board is a rules-based read of the public metrics, not a status for any individual booking.

The Dwell maps each public metric to the clock it illuminates and reports it dated to its source. It does not track individual containers and it is not routing or fee advice. For the free-time count itself, see the last free day calculator. For the fees those clocks trigger, see demurrage, detention and free time.