Key points
- Inputs: container types and numbers confirmed by the booking, details of goods awaiting shipment, package dimensions and weights, and stowage restrictions such as heavy, dangerous or non-stackable cargo.
- Common container types: 20ft standard, 40ft standard and 40ft high cube, plus special equipment such as reefer, open-top and flat-rack containers.
- The plan must respect in-container weight and volume limits as well as road weight limits, and provide the data for the VGM declaration.
In practice
The container plan sits between booking and loading and is where shipping most often goes back and forth: late goods, changes in booked equipment or cargo that will not fit on site all force a re-plan. Each re-plan can bring extra costs – an additional container, air freight, storage – so who bears them must be clear and confirmed by the parties involved.
For companies consolidating many products and orders into shared containers, the container plan also answers which goods from which order are in which container. That is the foundation for issuing packing lists per container, invoicing per order and tracking arrivals. Once confirmed, loading follows the plan on site, and the actual result is written back to form the packing list, with any differences logged.
How Tranexio supports it
Tranexio manages the container plan within the full shipping chain (shipping plan → booking → container plan / packing list → space release and container pick-up → sealing). It is kept as a separate entity from the packing list, and any re-plan requires confirmation by both parties, with the bearer of costs recorded. See Logistics and documents.