The Terminal Black Hole: Why Shipping Visibility Stops at the Gate

If you are a shipper, or even a shipping line – terminals remain a complete black hole in the supply chain. You have this massive blind spot where you know when a box went in, but you have no insight as to when it’s coming out. It’s a peculiar paradox: in an age where we can track the progress of a pizza delivery in real-time, how is it possible that we lose visibility of multi-million-dollar cargo shipments the moment they enter a terminal?

The answer isn’t (usually) technological – it’s commercial. And to understand why, we need to look at the complex, often fractious relationship between terminals and shipping lines.

The Reality Behind the Black Box

Obviously there are differences, depending on where in the world you are, but generally terminals have excellent visibility of every container movement within their facility. They know exactly where boxes are, whether they’re sitting in the yard, hanging off a crane, or being moved by yard equipment.

Every single step is tracked with precision, if not, the entire terminal would grind to a halt under a mountain of unknown containers. They’re just not sharing that information – and they have their reasons.

Whether that tracking accuracy goes down to the level of container placement onboard the vessel is another story – but if it’s on the ship then it’s not a terminal problem.

From a terminal’s perspective, sharing detailed operational data with shipping lines or shippers makes absolutely no sense, both commercially and operationally. The moment they start providing real-time visibility into crane operations, container positions, and yard movements, they open themselves up to interference in their operations.

In all fairness, that’s not a totally unjustified concern. If I had been given this kind of insight into what my vessels were up to when I was a stowage planner, I highly doubt I would have been able to resist picking up the phone.

The Interference Factor

Consider this scenario: if a terminal were to share that they’re operating with four cranes instead of the promised five, or that certain containers aren’t being loaded in their planned positions, shipping lines would immediately start questioning their operations. These questions, while potentially valid, would inevitably slow down the terminal’s primary objective: maximizing throughput.

Terminals understand it is simply impossible for the officer on watch (or even the entire crew if you really wanted to try) to monitor and match the exact load position of every container, so this is not something you can simply assume the vessel will do on your behalf.

It is physically impossible to read most on-deck container numbers, even if you wanted to try.

The Legal Shield

Perhaps there’s another, more serious reason for this lack of transparency: legal liability. When incidents occur and investigations begin into where containers were actually loaded on ships, much of it comes back to what happened in the terminal. By maintaining this information blackout, terminals create a layer of protection for themselves.

If a terminal provides real-time loading information to a shipping line and errors are spotted, they could be forced to perform expensive and time-consuming restows to correct these issues. More importantly, if something goes wrong later and there’s documented evidence that the terminal was aware of loading issues but didn’t address them, they could face significant legal consequences.

As one terminal operator I spoke to noted during a recent conference – without a hint of irony – they frequently receive vessels from previous ports where container positions are all wrong. What makes this observation particularly interesting is that they probably do exactly the same thing to every other port, but they’re completely fixated on what’s coming in while never acknowledging their own role in perpetuating the problem.

This is something I frequently see when acting in my capacity as an expert witness for stowage related vessel or cargo claims. The BAPLIE says one thing, the photos tell a very different story. It doesn’t really matter too much when we’re talking about empty containers but far too often, I see bays of laden boxes where up to 30% of the slot positions do not match what the terminal reported.

The Cost of Transparency

In the end, it comes down to a simple business calculation. Terminals make their money through throughput – boxes in, boxes out. Particularly in Asia, where terminals are often paid by the move (around $50 per move), productivity is everything. Anything that gets in the way of that objective, including transparency (or a really annoying stowage planner) that might slow down operations, is a threat to their business model.

The only place in the world where I would be willing to bet that every container is loaded in the planned and reported position is Japan. White gloved stevedores carefully placing precisely pre-counted out twistlocks as each box is loaded, hitting productivity levels of up to 58 moves per hour. It’s all very impressive, but the price tag for this is a 48-hour cargo cut-off prior to the vessel arrival. No room for changes, and deep bows of apology if even one container is loaded in a different slot than planned.

Looking Ahead

The industry has gotten itself into a position where data sharing isn’t in anyone’s interests. Even the providers of vessel stability, stowage planning, and terminal operating systems are trapped in this dynamic, especially since they tend to provide all these solutions under a single brand. While these software providers could easily enable data flow from terminal systems to shipping lines, doing so would risk alienating their largest customer base – the terminals themselves. Why would I shoot my gift horse in the mouth?

The only way forward may be through technology that bypasses this structural impasse entirely. Smart containers with tracking capabilities could provide visibility regardless of terminal cooperation.

However, this solution brings its own challenges – smart tracking is a great idea, but there are many factors to be considered:

• Lithium-Ion batteries on/in containers pose risks that we haven’t yet gotten our heads (or legislation) around.
• Containers and cargo holds make excellent faraday cages to keep the signals from being broadcast.
• Signal transmission from ship to shore in a cost-effective manner remains a hurdle.

Until then, we’re left with a system where shippers and carriers must largely trust that when a ship sails, their containers sailed with it. It’s not ideal, but it’s the reality we’ve built through decades of competing interests and misaligned incentives.

The Real Question

The question isn’t whether we can technically solve this visibility gap – we clearly can. The real question is whether the industry is ready to fundamentally rethink the relationships and incentives that have created and maintained this black hole in our supply chains.

Written by Tom Bebbington