ShippingRates Methodology

Carrier-Backed Sources

ShippingRates starts with carrier-backed source material: official tariff pages, local information pages, carrier PDFs, XLSX attachments, public schedule surfaces, and validated source manifests. The system preserves source URLs, source files, and discovery paths so rows can be traced back to where they came from.

Coverage is intentionally conservative. When a carrier page is blocked, ambiguous, stale, or shaped in a way the current database cannot represent safely, ShippingRates records the acquisition issue instead of forcing it into customer-facing data.

Validation Before Promotion

Raw scraper output is treated as dirty until it passes validation. Staging flows normalize ports, carrier names, charge codes, currencies, date ranges, container types, and D&D ladders before rows are promoted into production tables.

• UN/LOCODE and curated port aliases are used for location normalization.
• ISO 4217 currency codes and charge-code rules catch invalid tariff rows.
• Deterministic date normalization avoids guessing when a source is unclear.
• Unsupported broad scopes, grouped equipment families, and collision-prone rows stay fail-closed.

Freshness and Limits

Carrier data changes at different speeds. ShippingRates tracks scrape state, source freshness, staging outcomes, and post-weekly validation reports, but it does not pretend every market updates daily. Public pages and APIs expose the best validated data available for the requested surface.

No synthetic logistics data is invented, seeded, or silently backfilled into production paths. If ShippingRates cannot validate a row against a real source or a deterministic transform, that row does not become customer-facing truth.

What This Means for Users

Calculators such as the demurrage calculator, detention calculator, and rate comparison page are designed to be decision-support tools, not legal tariff substitutes. Use them to compare options, identify cost risk, and automate freight intelligence workflows, then confirm contract-specific obligations with your carrier, forwarder, or broker when money is on the line.

AI agents can use the same validated intelligence through the agent entry path, while humans can read current market context on the ShippingRates blog.