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COSCO tracking: strong at the ports, thinner in between

Excellent visibility at Chinese ports and a different picture on some destination legs.

Aron Mayer · 4 min read

Quick take

  • Origin events at Chinese ports are detailed and prompt.
  • Destination detail varies with local integration.
  • OOCL is part of the group but runs its own tracking.

COSCO handles enormous volume and its publishing reflects where its systems are deepest.

Origin strength

Out of major Chinese ports the event stream is detailed: empty release, gate in, yard movements, loading, all promptly published. If your shipment originates there, you have good visibility for the first third of the journey.

Destination variation

Arrival and discharge are reliably published. Beyond that, it depends heavily on the destination port and whether COSCO has deep local integration. In some ports you get gate out and empty return, in others you do not.

Time zones are worth watching. Events are not always normalised, so a discharge that looks like it happened on the 14th may have been the 15th locally. When free time is being counted, that one day matters.

See it on your own shipment

Paste a container number, bill of lading or booking reference. We detect the carrier across 170+ shipping lines, and when the data does not line up, a person checks it.

OOCL and the group

OOCL belongs to the same group but operates its own systems, and its tracking is generally regarded as one of the better ones in the industry. If your bill of lading says OOCL, use OOCL tracking rather than assuming the parent will have the data.

Questions people ask

Should I track OOCL on the COSCO site?

No. OOCL maintains separate tracking and it is more reliable for OOCL bills.

Why is the timestamp in a different time zone?

Some events are published in local port time, others in a fixed zone. Check before calculating free time.

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