Carrier arrival estimates missing for one in 12 container shipments, study finds

Carrier arrival estimates were absent for roughly one in 12 ocean container shipments in a study by South Korean supply chain data platform Tradlinx, Hellenic Shipping News reported. The analysis found 42,832 cases without a carrier estimated time of arrival (ETA), equivalent to 8.43% of the shipments examined, with gaps concentrated around transshipment movements.

The study covered 508,055 container shipments tracked through Tradlinx Ocean Visibility, with actual arrivals confirmed by March 2026. It was conducted as the company developed and validated its AI-ETA arrival prediction model. Carrier estimates and the model’s predictions were assessed at the same point in time, with accuracy measured using mean absolute error in hours.

Missing estimates for intermediate transshipment ports accounted for 30,929 cases, or 6.09% of all shipments analysed. A further 6,168 cases, representing 1.21%, involved absent final-destination estimates for transshipment cargo. Direct shipments lacked destination estimates in 5,735 cases, or 1.13%. Taken together, transshipment cargo represented 87% of all missing estimates, while nearly three-quarters of the gaps concerned the intermediate port itself.

Where carrier estimates were available, their average error across the validation sample was 15.4 hours. For 25,341 shipments, or 4.99% of the total, the estimates differed from actual arrival by at least 48 hours. Within that group, the average error reached 90.0 hours, according to the findings reported by Hellenic Shipping News.

Tradlinx said missing arrival information could leave planning teams manually checking carrier portals because blank fields rarely generate alerts. The company linked those gaps to slower customer updates and trucking and warehouse arrangements being made without a dependable arrival time. It argued that the absence of an estimate deserved attention alongside the accuracy of those supplied.

The company said its AI-ETA model generated a prediction in every case where a carrier estimate was missing. In the comparison, its average error was 10.6 hours, which Tradlinx described as 31.4% below the carrier figure. For shipments whose carrier estimates were wrong by at least 48 hours, the model’s average error was 9.2 hours, against 90.0 hours for carriers.