Know how many days your inbound lane is running behind.

You own the lane from the origin port to your warehouse door. The carrier schedule gives you a vessel due date, the forwarder's tracking page gives you the same date in a different font, and the promise date you gave the business sits in the ERP with a buffer on top of it. That buffer is a guess. Somebody set it after a bad quarter, and it has been adjusted by feel since.

Then the port gets busy. Ships stack up at anchor, the terminal fills, boxes sit in the yard waiting for a truck or a rail slot. Nobody tells you how many days that adds to your shipment, only that things are slow. So you phone the forwarder, who says it is congested, which you already knew. Sales wants a firm date for a customer order. You give them a range wide enough to be useless, or you pad every lane by the same amount and tie up stock you did not need to hold.

The buffer is too short on exactly the lane that gets hit, and too long on the lanes that did not. A number for your lane, for today, is what is missing. That is what this pilot sets out to produce.

The pilot is an invitation to shape the service, not a finished product. These are the pieces we intend to build with the first lanes.

1. 2.1

   Slip-day number

   Daily, per lane

   An expected lead-time slip for each lane you register, in days. It is an estimate from current congestion, and it moves as the queue and the yard move. You would use it in place of the flat buffer when you set or revise a promise date.

2. 2.2

   Lane detail

   Behind the number

   The vessel queue, terminal fill and yard dwell readings that the slip-day number is made from, so you can see why a lane moved and argue with it if the picture looks wrong to you.

3. 2.3

   Daily update

   Every clear day

   The number is refreshed each day the lane is watched and a usable satellite pass exists. On a cloudy day the previous reading stands and is marked as old.

1. 1

   Register your lane

   Tell us the origin port, the discharge terminal and the shipments you plan against. One lane is enough to start.

2. 2

   Daily image of the terminal

   A high-resolution satellite pass over the discharge terminal and its approach, each day one is available.

3. 3

   Read the congestion

   Ships at anchor and in the approach, how much of the yard is occupied, and how that has changed since the last clear pass.

4. 4

   Slip-day number posts

   The lane's estimate is updated and sent to you the way you agree during the pilot.

• An estimate, not a delivery date

  The slip-day number is built from current congestion. It is not a contractual date, and it will be wrong when something outside the picture changes, such as a vessel skipping a call or a customs hold.

• Daily when the sky allows

  Cloud cover can hide the terminal. The service aims for a daily reading but a cloudy day waits for the next clear pass. It is not continuous tracking.

• Resolution sets what we can read

  At the coarse end of 0.5–2 m, a container is about a pixel wide, so terminal fill is read as occupied yard area, not a count of boxes. Ships at anchor can be picked out at these resolutions.

• Yard dwell is inferred

  A satellite sees how full a yard is and how that changes between passes. It cannot see a box number. Dwell is worked out from that change, which makes it the least certain of the three readings.

• What it can't see

  It does not see your carrier's schedule changes, customs holds, rail or trucking shortages inland, or documents. It reads the water and the yard.

• Lanes it can cover

  A lane with a terminal and approach visible from space. Inland ports and heavily covered coasts will give fewer clear days.