United States ocean freight by the numbers
Last updated:
Shipzy samples 359 port-to-port lanes for United States, on which 7 ocean carriers publish schedules, connecting 89 countries.
The fastest scheduled transit is 3 days, the median scheduled transit is 39 days, and 9 in 10 sampled sailings complete within 65 days.
19% of the 3626 sampled sailings are direct; the remainder route via a transshipment hub.
The VGM cutoff falls a median of 4 days before departure, across 2638 sampled sailings.
Figures describe 3629 sailings sampled from 7 carrier APIs, last refreshed 22 October 2026.
Cutoff lead times in United States
| Cutoff | Median days before departure | Sailings sampled |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation cutoff | 4 | 1801 |
| Cargo cutoff | 4 | 1465 |
| Dangerous goods cutoff | 4 | 1210 |
| Reefer cutoff | 4 | 1192 |
| VGM cutoff | 4 | 2638 |
| Port cutoff | 3 | 1410 |
| Terminal cutoff | 2 | 937 |
Most-sampled trade lanes from United States
| Partner country | Lanes sampled |
|---|---|
| CN | 8 |
| MY | 8 |
| PH | 6 |
| AU | 5 |
| BH | 5 |
How these numbers are measured
Figures come from the ocean schedule APIs Shipzy integrates with: CMA CGM, COSCO, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, Maersk, ONE, ZIM. They describe the lanes Shipzy samples, not every sailing serving United States.
The nightly sync sweeps nine global hub ports plus a set of regional template lanes, storing up to three sailings per lane, and refreshes one country per night. So coverage leans towards intercontinental routings, and the as-of date above can be several weeks old for smaller markets.
Transit figures are medians rather than averages, so a few multi-transshipment routings cannot distort them. Cutoff lead times exclude carrier-estimated cutoffs and any lead outside a 0–21 day window. Emissions figures are not published here, because only one carrier reports measured CO2; the rest are modelled from transit time and would restate transit days as emissions.
- Carriers sampled: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026.
- Of global fleet capacity: Sum of each sampled carrier’s share of global container capacity. Describes the carriers, not this country’s market share.
- Port-to-port lanes: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026.
- Countries connected: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026.
- Fastest transit: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026.
- Median transit: Median of 3629 scheduled transit times. Median, not mean — a few multi-transshipment routings would distort an average.
- Direct sailings: Share of 3626 sampled sailings with no transshipment. Carriers count legs slightly differently, so treat as indicative.
- Named services: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026.
- Vessels seen: Derived from ocean schedules published by 7 carrier APIs, as of 22 October 2026. Counted by vessel name, so spelling variants may inflate this slightly.