Smart Sailing Schedules

Most frequently asked questions

• How to use Smart Schedules?

  1. Enter the POL and POD for which you’d like to access the sailing schedules.
  2. Click on the Search button to instantly check the sailing or vessel schedules.
  3. Once the search results are generated, you can use Filters and Sorting options to structure these schedules as per your preference.
  4. Refer to the generated schedules online or Sign up to download the schedule for free.

• What are Smart Schedules? How can a shipper utilise it?

  Smart schedules equip you to make intelligent decisions while planning the movement of your freight. The portal allows you to check sailing schedules and vessel schedules of various carriers on a unified dashboard, making it stress-free to find a carrier that best suits your production and delivery schedule. It also displays information regarding trans-shipments.

  Besides, the portal enables you to compare your booking rate with GoComet Freight Index (GFI) and ensures that you aren’t overpaying. The system further aids you in choosing the suitable carrier by displaying each shipping line’s performance based on historical data.

• What are the benefits of using Smart Schedules?

  Typically before you schedule shipment, accessing container sailing schedules or shipping line schedules requires you to visit countless websites. GoComet’s smart shipping schedules save you the trouble of scanning through multiple websites by making all the containerships’ schedules/container vessels’ schedules available on a single window.

• What is GFI (GoComet Freight Index)?

  GFI stands for GoComet Freight Index. It is a shipping freight index that helps you benchmark freight rates for major ports across the world.

• How is GFI calculated?

  GoComet Freight Index gathers data from over 25,000 quotes submitted on the GoComet platform every month by more than 4,000 vendors from across the world. These are actual quotes for bookings made by shippers across the globe. The system considers the top-rated and lowest quoting vendors on each route and runs its machine learning algorithms to determine the GFI. The proprietary algorithms are similar to those used by the World Container Freight Index and Shanghai Freight Index.

• Why is the GFI public?

  GFI has proved to be of immense help to our customers. They have been using it regularly to benchmark rates, and it has enabled them to show their management that they are getting the best possible prices for all shipments and negotiating with a substantial number of vendors.

  To extend this benefit to the broader community, GoComet decided to make GFI publicly available.

• Is GFI based on spot rates or contract rates?

  GoComet uses both spot as well as contract rates to calculate GFI.

• Why is there a GFI demarcation for 20’ and 40’ Container Loads?

  There is a considerable difference between the rates of 20’ and 40’ containers. The prices of 40’ containers aren’t necessarily twice that of 20’ containers. Hence, for clarity, it is crucial to mention the costs of the two container types separately.

• What about HAZ, Reefer, ISO containers?

  Currently, GFI is not available for Haz, Reefer or ISO containers publicly. If you would like to access that information, kindly drop an email to support@gocomet.com.

• How do you calculate shipping line performance?

  A shipment is considered delayed only when it gets delayed by more than 36 hours compared to the planned date. Otherwise, it is considered to be on time. According to actual carrier data, the performance of a carrier is calculated based on the percentage of on-time deliveries by that carrier. This information is available on both regional as well as global level.

• Which are regions that you consider for Shipping line performance?

  The regions set on our platform are as follows:

  • North America
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Africa
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • South-East Asia
  • Central Asia
  • Australia & New Zealand
  • Mediterranean
  • Far East