Voyage estimation

Voyage estimate and TCE, on real distances

Freight in, bunkers and port costs and canal dues out, ending at the time charter equivalent per day. Routed through water rather than over it, against the cargo and the ship you are actually looking at.

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The distance is the estimate

Every figure in a voyage estimate rests on the distance, and a great circle across a continent is not a distance. The passage here is routed through navigable water, with canal transits where they apply and the days that follow from a speed and a sea margin.

Between any two of 11,425 ports. A leg nobody has asked for before is measured from scratch and then kept, so the second desk to ask the same question gets it immediately.

What goes into the number

Bunkers by grade

Chartering and above

Priced separately, because a ship burns VLSFO at sea and usually gas oil inside an emission control area, and one blended price hides the difference that decides a marginal voyage.

Port costs and canal dues

Chartering and above

Per call, with the canal transits the route actually uses rather than an assumption about which way she goes.

Commission, both kinds

Chartering and above

Address commission to the charterer and brokerage to the broker, which come off different bases and are two deductions rather than one.

Time charter equivalent per day

Chartering and above

The number that decides whether the cargo is worth taking, and the only figure on the sheet that compares one voyage against another honestly.

Several ships, ranked

Fleet and above

The same cargo run against up to eight hulls at once and ordered by TCE per day. The ranking is the product: a column read downwards answers "which of these do I offer".

Sea distance on its own

Desk and above

Without an estimate attached, for the times the question really is just how far and how long.

What it does not pretend to do

There is no weather routing and no live bunker price feed. Prices are the ones you type, because a stale price presented as a live one is worse than an honest blank, and a desk that fixes on bunkers knows its own numbers better than any feed would.

It is a chartering estimate, not a performance claim. It answers what a voyage is worth before you fix it, which is a different question from what she actually burned.

The arithmetic is free

There is a free TCE calculator on this site: no account, nothing stored, runs in the browser. It does the same sum on numbers you supply. What it cannot do is take the distance from the water, hold the estimate against a cargo, or rank eight ships against one enquiry.

The free TCE calculator, the worked estimate, or what the desk costs.