An empty container depot is a simple business with a hard accounting problem. The depot receives empty boxes from shipping lines, stores them, surveys and repairs them, and releases them to the next shipper. It is paid by the line for each lift, each storage day after free time, each survey, each wash and each approved repair. Every one of those is a small amount. The money is in recording all of them, for the right line, at that line’s tariff, and that is exactly what a gate book and a whiteboard cannot do at volume.
This article follows one box through a depot and sets out what a container depot management system records at each step, so the invoice at the end of the month is one the line pays without a phone call.
Pre-advice
The line, or the trucker bringing the box, tells the depot what is coming: container number, size and type, the line, whether it is coming in empty or for repair. The depot does not have to be told, but when it is, the gate-in starts from a record and the gate takes seconds. A box that arrives without pre-advice is still received; the record is simply created at the gate.
Gate in: the number, the condition and the EIR
The gate is where the depot’s evidence is made. Three things happen before the truck moves:
- The container number is read, not typed. A camera or a phone reads the eleven characters and checks the check digit. A typed number is how a box is received against the wrong line.
- The condition is photographed. Each side, the floor, the doors, the seal. Damage is coded (dent, hole, cut, bent frame, floor damage) at the location on the box where it was found.
- The Equipment Interchange Receipt is printed and in the driver’s hand before he leaves. The EIR states the box, the time and the condition. It is what the depot shows the line when a repair is disputed, and what the trucker shows if damage is claimed later.
A gate that does this on a phone, with the EIR coming out of a printer in the cabin, runs at the speed of the truck queue. A gate that fills a book and photographs on a personal phone is where the evidence goes missing.
Position: block, bay, row and tier
The box is placed in the yard on a plan: a block, a bay, a row and a tier. This matters more for depots than for most yards because boxes are stacked. A box on tier one with four above it costs four moves to reach. A system that knows where each box sits can tell the yard which available box of a given size and type costs the fewest moves to release, which is the difference between a profitable release and one that eats the lift fee.
Reefers are recorded with their plug-in time and temperature set point, because a reefer waiting for a shipper must be pre-cooled to the line’s instruction and the electricity is billable.
Survey and estimate
A damaged box is surveyed. The surveyor records each damage item against the box with its photograph, the repair needed and the labour and material at the line’s approved rates. That becomes an estimate sent to the line for approval.
Lines approve estimates in their own portals, each with its own format and rules, and chasing approvals by email is where repair revenue is lost: a box sits unrepaired, unavailable and unbilled while the approval waits in someone’s inbox. A depot system tracks each estimate’s state (sent, queried, approved, declined) and shows the margin on each repair before it is done, so the depot knows which repairs are worth the labour and which the line should be asked to pay more for.
Repair and wash
Approved repairs go to the workshop as work orders, with the parts and the hours recorded against each box. A wash is its own service with its own rate. When the work is done the box is re-surveyed, photographed, and its status becomes available. Every item on the approved estimate is now a line on the invoice, priced at the rate the line approved, and nothing done was unapproved.
Available, release order and gate out
A shipper who needs an empty asks the line, and the line issues a release order to the depot: so many boxes of a size and type for that shipper’s trucker. The release order is recorded against the line’s stock, and the gate releases boxes against it. A box under repair, on hold, or belonging to another line is never released against the order; the system picks the available boxes that cost the fewest moves.
At gate out the number is read again, the condition is photographed again, a second EIR is printed, and the box leaves. The storage clock stops. The release order shows how many boxes remain against it.
The daily stock report
Every shipping line expects a report each morning: how many of its boxes the depot holds, by size and type and condition, what came in and went out yesterday, what is under repair. The line plans its empty supply from these reports across every depot it uses, and a depot whose report is late or wrong is one the line stops sending boxes to. A system produces the report from the gate records, in the format each line expects, and sends it without anyone compiling a spreadsheet at seven in the morning. Gate moves can be sent to the line as they happen, which some lines now require.
The invoice
At month end the depot invoices each line: lifts in and out, storage days beyond free time, surveys, washes, reefer plug-in, and repairs at the approved estimates. The invoice lists every container with every item against it, so the line’s own equipment team can check it against their records. Disputes come from three places, and a system removes each:
- A move that was done and never recorded. The gate record is the move; nothing has to be remembered.
- A box priced at the wrong tariff. Each line’s tariff is stored and applied by the line on the box, not by whoever prepares the invoice.
- A repair the line says it never approved. The approved estimate is attached to the repair line.
Holds
A line can hold a box (an insurance survey, a claim, a box it wants returned to a particular port), and the depot can hold one (unpaid charges, a dispute). A held box is not released against any order and the gate refuses it. Holds are recorded with who placed them and why, and lifted the same way.
What the line sees
A line or a lessor that can see its own boxes in the depot, with the EIRs and photographs for each, and approve estimates from the same screen, deals with the depot without phone calls. For a depot competing for a line’s business, that visibility is now part of the service.
The yard team’s phones
Everything above happens at the gate, in the yard and in the workshop, not in the office. The gate clerk, the surveyor and the forklift driver each need the record in their hand: receive, survey, move, repair, release. A depot system that runs only on the office computer puts a transcription step between the yard and the record, and the transcription step is where the money is lost.
Signs a depot has outgrown its whiteboard
- A line disputes the monthly invoice and the depot cannot find the EIR.
- Repair approvals wait in email while repaired boxes sit unbilled.
- The morning stock report is compiled by hand and sent late.
- The yard releases a box that costs five moves when a one-move box was available.
- A box is found in the yard that no record says is there.
A container depot management system is the decision that every lift, day and repair is recorded where it happens, by the person doing it, at the tariff of the line it belongs to. The invoice is then a report of what happened, not a reconstruction of it.