What is a shipment Delay ?

Shipments are given an ETA before the containers are even loaded.

A lot of unexpected events can happen between that first time of arrival estimation and the final delivery, making this initial ETA unreliable. The difference between the current ETA and the initial ETA is usually called the delay.

Being alerted of major delays will help you focus on the shipments that need your attention.

How do we monitor a shipment delay ?

At Sinay, we start monitoring your shipment whenever you start tracking it with our webhook API. At that moment, we store the initial date of every event from your shipment.

From that moment on, we start monitoring your shipment and specifically :

we track every major variation of date of every event
we compute the delay between each initial date and the current eta

How can you use our delay monitoring in your app ?

You can use our webhook API to subscribe to alerts and to monitor your shipment delays.

By subscribing to specific events which track delays for some events
By using the event dates, initial date and delay characteristics to update your tracking system

Subscribe to our webhooks

Follow our Webhook quickstart tutorial to create you first webhook.

If you want to use them to detect delays, we recommend subscribing to the "date.changed" events for every event that is of importance in your process. Find in this page the list of all possible webhooks events.

If you do, you will receive a webhook everytime the corresponding event date has evolved from more than 24h (in the past or in the future) since the last webhook of this type you received.

Extract Delay from webhook response

For every webhook you receive, you will find in the webhook payload some fields that will alow you to get information on shipment Delay.

Fields description

Field name	Type	Description	Example
delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange	float	difference between current event date and the date you received for that event in the last date.changed event	76.5
eventDetails.date	UTC Date	current date of the event	2023-12-30T05:39:00Z
eventDetails.initialDate	UTC Date	date of the event when you added the shipment to your webhooks	2023-12-30T05:39:00Z
eventDetails.delayInHours	Integer	difference bewteen date and initial date. A positive value indicates the event is late, a negative value indicates the shipment is early.	36.5

Example response

{
  "containerNumber": "OOCU7903771",
  "delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange": 12.5,
  "eventDetails": {
    "date": "2023-12-30T05:39:00Z",
    "delayInHours": 36.5,
    "description": "Loaded",
    "eventCode": "LOAD",
    "eventType": "EQUIPMENT",
    "facility": null,
    "initialDate": "2023-12-28T17:09:00.000Z",
    "isActual": true,
    "isAdditionalEvent": false,
    "location": {
      "coordinates": {
        "lat": 32.08354,
        "lng": -81.09983
      },
      "country": "United States",
      "countryCode": "US",
      "locode": "USSAV",
      "name": "Savannah",
      "state": "Georgia",
      "timezone": "America/New_York"
    },
    "routeType": "SEA",
    "status": "CDD",
    "transportType": "VESSEL",
    "vessel": {
      "callSign": "WDM2200",
      "flag": "US",
      "imo": 9349502,
      "mmsi": 369215000,
      "name": "COLORADO EXPRESS"
    },
    "voyage": "040E"
  },
  "eventName": "date.changed.container.discharge.at.final.pod",
  "shipmentNumber": "OOCU7903771",
  "shipmentType": "CT",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-04T07:13:07.691Z"
}

Real case webhook example

Let's take a real example to clear any doubts.

I subscribe to "date.changed.container.discharge.at.final.pod".

When I subscribe, the date of discharge at POD is 2023-12-28T17:09:00.000Z.

You get sent no webhooks.

2 days later, Sinay notices that the date of discharge at POD has changed to 2023-12-28T15:09:00.000Z

The delta between the new date and the inital date is less that 24h, you get sent no webhooks.

6h later, Sinay notices a new change to 2023-12-30T17:09:00.000Z

The delta between 2023-12-28T17:09:00.000Z and 2023-12-30T17:09:00.000Z is more than 24h : you get sent a "date.changed.container.discharge.at.final.pod" webhook.

"eventDetails.delayinHours" = eventDetails.date - eventDetails.initialDate = 48

"delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange" = 48 (because you have never received a date change event for this event yet)

3 days later, the date changes back to 2023-12-28T17:09:00.000Z

The delta between the last webhook (2023-12-30T17:09:00.000Z) and the new date 2023-12-28T17:09:00.000Z is more than 24h : you receive again a new "date.changed.container.discharge.at.final.pod" webhook.

"eventDetails.delayinHours" = eventDetails.date - eventDetails.initialDate = 0

"delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange" = -48

Use the delay information

Once you have received a date.changed event, you can use it to update the data and even trigger some events on your application.

Example:

You are tracking a container "UETU2744195".

You know it is heading to Los Angeles, on the vessel "Sorbonne" and is supposed to arrive at 8am in June 25th.

You have subscribed to the "date.changed.vessel.arrival.at.final.pod" webhook and you receive the following webhook :

{
    "containerDetails": {},   
    "containerNumber": "UETU2744195",
    "delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange": 26.0,
    "eventDetails": {
        "date": "2024-06-26T10:00:00Z",
        "delayInHours": 26,
        "description": "Vessel arrival",
        "eventCode": "ARRI",
        "eventType": "TRANSPORT",
        "facility": null,
        "initialDate": "2024-06-25T08:00:00Z",
        "isActual": false,
        "isAdditionalEvent": false,
        "location": {
            "coordinates": {
                "lat": 34.05223,
                "lng": -118.24368,
                "updatedAt": null
            },
            "country": "United States",
            "countryCode": "US",
            "locode": "USLAX",
            "name": "Los Angeles",
            "state": "California",
            "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles"
        },
        "routeType": "SEA",
        "status": "VAD",
        "transportType": "VESSEL",
        "vessel": {
            "callSign": "9VFC4",
            "flag": "SG",
            "imo": 9387449,
            "mmsi": 563119000,
            "name": "Sorbonne"
        },
        "voyage": "185W"
    },
    "eventName": "date.changed.vessel.arrival.at.final.pod",
    "shipmentNumber": "UETU2744195",
    "shipmentType": "BK",
    "timestamp": "2024-06-02T23:50:10.541Z"
	}
}

With the "shipmentNumber" field, you know that it is your container "UETU2744195".

With the "eventName" you know that the vessel arrival date at POD has changed for more than 24h. With the "delayInHoursSinceLastDateChange" you know that their is a delay of +26hours.

By parsing the eventDetails you learn that the new event date is June 26th, 10am, and that the port and vessel have not changed.

You can now do the following things :

Edit your tracking information (ETA) in your database
Send an alert to your customers "ETA delay of 26h for UETU2744195. New ETA at Los Angeles: June 26th, 10am"