Vessel Tracking vs Cargo Tracking: Difference and Usage

With Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) or satellite-based tracking platforms, vessel tracking allows you to monitor the almost exact location of a ship carrying your goods. 

These near real-time updates about a specific ship’s movements and live location help reduce uncertainty across the supply chain, enabling more coordinated planning of operations like warehouse staffing and cargo distribution.

Benefits of Vessel Tracking 

Some of the key benefits of vessel tracking include:

• • Location updates in almost real time, assisting with arrival time estimations.
• • Easier anticipation of potential delays, which may be caused by weather, operational issues, or port congestion.

What are the Limitations of Vessel Tracking?

Vessel tracking, while useful, does have some limitations that you need to be aware of as a business planning your shipment. 

Firstly, you only know the ship’s location, rather than the locations of your individual containers. This means that if your cargo is waiting to be loaded onto the ship, tracking the vessel will provide limited useful information. 

Equally, because the vessel is being monitored, in cases where there are handling issues, customs hold-ups, or container-specific delays, you won’t be notified, which could make planning your supply chain more difficult. 

Cargo Tracking Limitations

Cargo tracking may be less useful in cases such as:

• • When the container has been scheduled but not yet loaded.
• • When issues relate to the vessel itself.

Here are some of the key differences between vessel and cargo tracking:

When it comes to selecting how to best track your shipment, the answer depends on the specific needs of your business.

If your goods are high-value, perishable, or sensitive and you want alerts for their condition, or support planning for customs clearance and downstream operations, warehouse staffing, or for your customers, then cargo tracking may be a better option.

However, if you want higher levels of visibility of transit progress or you are shipping multiple containers on the same vessel, then vessel tracking might be a more suitable  tracking option at the time.

In many instances, it can be beneficial to combine vessel tracking with cargo tracking to get complete supply chain visibility and assist with proactive risk management. This approach allows you to combine ETA forecasting with container-specific updates.