- Agency Agreement: The carrier line appoints the port agent and defines the specific duties and areas of responsibility of that agent.
- Agent: A person authorised to transact business for and in the name of another person or company. Types of agents are: brokers, commission merchants, resident buyers, sales agents or manufacturer’s representatives.
- Aggregate shipping: Numerous shipments from different shippers to one consignee that are consolidated and treated as a single consignment. Any consignment other than a consignment containing valuable cargo and charged for transport at general cargo rates (air cargo).
- Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA): The Automated System for Customs Data is a computerized system designed by the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) to administer a country’s Customs.
- Belly cargo: Freight accommodation located below the main deck.
- Boat: A relatively small, usually open craft or vessel designed to float on, and provide transport over, water. An inland vessel of any size.
- Brokerage: Freight forwarder/broker compensation as specified by the ocean tariff.
- Bunker Charge: An extra charge added to an ocean carrier’s freight rates. Also known as FAF (Fuel Adjustment Factor).
- Bunker: (Tank) spaces on board a vessel to store fuel.
- Bunkers: A maritime term referring to fuel used aboard the ship. Bunker fuel is technically any type of fuel oil used aboard ships. It gets its name from the containers on ships and in ports that it is stored in; in the days of steam they were coal bunkers but now they are bunker-fuel tanks.
- Cargo: Freight loaded into a ship.
- Clearance Limits: The size beyond which cars or loads cannot use tunnels, bridges, etc.
- Container ship: An ocean going ship designed to carry containers both internally and on deck. Sometimes called ‘Cellular’ vessels because made with cells designed to the size of ISO containers.
- Container: An intermodal container (also container, freight container, ISO container, shipping container or simply ‘box’) is a standardized reusable steel box used for the safe, efficient and secure storage and movement of materials and products within a global containerized intermodal freight transport system.
- Crew change: A crew change consist of replacing one of the ship’s crew members with another one.
- Customs Broker or Customhouse Broker: A firm that represents importers in all dealings with Customs. It is responsible for obtaining and submitting all documents for clearing merchandise through Customs, arranging inland transport, and paying all charges related to these functions.
- Customs clearance: Customs broker or other agent of the consignee designated to perform customs clearance services for the consignee
- Customs entry: All countries require that the importer make a declaration on incoming foreign goods. The importer then normally pays a duty on the imported merchandise. The importer’s statement is compared against the carrier’s vessel manifest to ensure that all foreign goods are properly declared.
- Customs Invoice: A form requiring all data in a commercial invoice along with a certificate of value and/or a certificate or origin. This is only required in some countries (usually former British territories) and serves as a seller’s commercial invoice.
- Customs Tariff: A schedule of charges assessed by a Government on imported or exported goods.
- Customs union: An agreement between two or more countries in which they arrange to abolish tariffs and other import restrictions on each other’s goods and establish a common tariff for the imports of all other countries.
- Customs: The Government agency charged with enforcing the rules passed to protect the country’s import and export revenues.
- Delivery: The transfer of property/goods from consignor to carrier, one carrier to another, or carrier to consignee.
- Disbursement: Sums paid out by a ship’s agent at a port and recovered from the carrier.
- Documents Against Payment (D/P): An indication on a draft that the documents attached are to be released to the drawee only on payment.
- Dry cargo container: A container which is designed for the carriage of goods other than liquids.
- Dry cargo: Cargo that is not liquid and/or does not require temperature control.
- Export: The shipment of goods outside one’s own country to a foreign country.
- General cargo: Cargo, consisting of goods, unpacked or packed, for example in cartons, crates, bags or bales, often palletised. General cargo can be shipped either in breakbulk or containerised.
- Husbanding: A term used by steamship lines, agents, or port captains who are appointed to handle all matters in assisting the master of the vessel – while in port – to obtain such services as bunkering, fresh water, food and supplies, payroll for the crew, doctors’ appointments and ship repair.
- Husbandry: managing the ship’s non-cargo related operations under the instructions of the Master, Owner or Operator.
- Import: To receive goods from a foreign country.
- Liner Service: The connection through vessels between ports within a trade.
- Liquefied natural Gas: Natural gas will liquefy at a temperature of approximately -259 F or -160 C at atmospheric pressure. One cubic foot of liquefied gas will expand to approximately 600 cubic feet of gas at atmospheric pressure.
- Maiden Trip: The first voyage of a vessel after delivery from new-building to her owner(s).
- Master: Either the commander of a commercial vessel, or a senior officer of a naval sailing ship in charge of routine seamanship and navigation but not in command during combat.
- Quotation: Amount stated as the price according to tariff for certain services to be provided or issued to a customer with specification on conditions for carriage.
- Shipping company: A group of persons jointly owning a ship and using it to gain profit from commercial marine shipments for joint account.
- Shipping order: A shipper’s instructions to carrier for forwarding goods; usually the triplicate copy of the bill of lading.
- Short shipped: Cargo manifested but not loaded.
- Slop chest: A ship’s store of merchandise, such as clothing, tobacco, etc., maintained aboard merchant ships for sale to the crew. Some tanks carry only chemicals, some others only carry food-grade liquids (e.g. milk). Tank containers are mostly shipper-owned, operated by companies who specialise in the transportation of specific types of bulk liquids.
- Steamship Agent: A duly appointed and authorised representative in a specified territory acting on behalf of a steamship line or lines and attending to all matters relating to the vessels owned by his principals.
- Storage: The logistics charge for the costs related to quay rent, charged on both the carrier’s equipment or the shipper’s equipment for containers staying on the ground idle.
- Surcharge: The amount charged to settle additional costs in ocean shipping (ex: CSC, BAF).
- Tally: The operation of hauling aft the sheets, or drawing them in the direction of the ship’s stern.
- Tank container: A specialized liquid bulk container used for the transportation of fluids. It is essentially a big cylinder inside an ISO-sized frame made to allow stacking.
- Tanker: A tanker is a bulk carrier designed to transport liquid cargo, most often petroleum products. Oil tankers vary in size from small coastal vessels of 1,500 tons deadweight, through medium-sized ship of 60,000 tons, to the giant VLCCs (very large crude carriers).
- Towage: Towage is a contract whereby one ship moves another. Towage, as opposed to salvage, is a service contract, which does not involve a marine peril, and the consideration is an hourly or daily rate or a lump sum, rather than a salvage reward based on the peril, the work accomplished and the value of the object salved.
- Tracking: The function of maintaining status information, including current location, of cargo, cargo items, consignments or containers either full or empty.
- Transmittal letter: A letter from the shipper to its agent listing the particulars of a shipment, the documents being transmitted and instructions for the disposition of those documents.
- Transship: A system under which cargo is transferred from one transportation line to another.
- United Arab Shipping Company (UASC): Established in July 1976; jointly by the six shareholding states from the Persian Gulf (Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE). The head office is located in the State of Kuwait. UASC is the largest ocean carrier of dry cargo to the Middle East.
- Valuable cargo: A consignment which contains one or more valuable articles.
- Vanning: Stowing cargo in a container.
- Vessel: A floating structure designed for the transport of cargo and/or passengers. Boiler, drum.
- Weight cargo: A cargo on which the transportation charge is assessed on the basis of weight.
