Once a shipment is added, Real-View keeps it up to date for you. This page explains what the statuses mean, why there are two arrival dates, and how to read the port-dwell figures.

The status lifecycle

Every shipment moves through these stages:

• Pending — added; vessel lookup queued.
• In transit — vessel located and en route.
• Approaching port — closing on the destination port.
• At port — arrived and docked; the dwell clock is running.
• Cleared — cargo cleared at the port.
• Delivered — container delivered to you.
• Archived — you have filed it away; it no longer counts against your plan's active-shipment limit.

Two arrival dates: carrier ETA vs Real-View ETA

On each shipment you see two estimated arrivals side by side:

• Carrier ETA — the date the shipping line published.
• Real-View ETA — our estimate, padded for the congestion and typical dwell at the destination port.

The gap between them — shown in days and colour-coded — is the useful bit. A big gap is an early warning that the carrier's date is optimistic for how that port is actually running.

Port dwell

When a container reaches the port, Real-View starts a dwell clock — how long the box has been sitting there. The dashboard also shows the average dwell for each SA port so you have a baseline. A long dwell is flagged as a warning, and a very long one as critical, because every extra day at the quay is extra cost.

The map

Shipments include a map view with the destination ports marked. A live vessel position on the map is switched on once the AIS (vessel-tracking) data feed is connected — until then the map shows the port reference points and an "awaiting data" note rather than a live pin.