Understanding Container Milestones

 

What are container milestones?
Container milestones are individual events recorded during a container's journey.

They are different from overall shipment statuses such as Planned, In Transit, Arrived, or Completed.

For example, Tracktainer can separately report operational events such as:

• 
  Container gate-out
  


• 
  Empty return
  


• 
  Departure and movement toward another port
  


• 
  Arrival at the Port of Discharge
  


• 
  Transshipment activity
  

The information available depends on the tracking data received for the shipment.

Shipment status vs milestone
A shipment status summarizes the overall tracking state.

For example:

In Transit

A milestone tells you what actually happened during the shipment journey.

For example:

Container gated out

This distinction becomes especially useful when a booking contains multiple containers.

Tracktainer can show that two containers have completed a gate-out event while another container is still pending.

Can containers in the same shipment have different milestones?
Yes.

Individual containers may complete an event at different times.

Tracktainer's multi-container tracking structure can therefore show progress such as:

2 gated out · 1 pending

rather than treating all containers as if they had completed the same event.



The same approach is used for empty returns. A current Tracktainer notification can show 2 returned · 1 pending for a three-container shipment.

Why are milestones useful?
Milestones help operations teams quickly understand:

• 
  What happened to a container
  


• 
  When an event happened
  


• 
  Which containers have completed an event
  


• 
  Which containers are still pending
  


• 
  Whether the container journey is complete