Fleet Deployment
How hard the world fleet is working right now: operational speed versus design (slow-steaming) and the share of tonnage sitting idle at anchor or in port. Derived live from AIS, by segment.
Netting slow-steaming against idle tonnage, tankers are working their fleet the least, 69% of design speed with 41% of tonnage idle, while bulkers work theirs hardest, 79% of design speed with the lightest idle (37%). Two segments pull back nearly the same effective supply by different mechanisms: container ships' shortfall leans on slow-steaming (40 points slow-steaming, 22 idle), while tankers' splits evenly (31 slow-steaming, 29 idle), though the container-ship read is less firm.
Effective supply withdrawn, by lever
Each segment's nominal capacity currently held back, slow-steaming netted against idle tonnage, split into the two levers, which sum to the total. Longer bars hold back more; the colour split shows by which lever, so two near-equal bars can withdraw the same supply by opposite means.
Read as a share of each segment's nominal (design-speed, fully-employed) capacity: the two levers, speed lost to slow-steaming and tonnage lost to idle, sum exactly to the total withdrawn. Speed is the design-capped index. Bars marked * rest on a thin or weak-bimodal speed sample, a less firm read.
Slow-steaming
Mean operational speed of the underway fleet against a vetted per-segment design speed. Below 100% means the fleet is slow-steaming, withdrawing effective tonne-mile capacity, a key supply lever brokers watch.
Operational vs design speed
Mean underway speed (SOG > 3 kn) vs the segment design reference, knots.
Bars show the raw mean speeds; the slow-steaming % above is capped at 40 to 120% of design for robustness, so a segment sailing above its design reference can read 120% on the KPI while its operational bar tops the design bar here.
Idle & anchored tonnage
Share of each segment's tonnage not steaming: at anchor, moored or stopped. High anchorage near load/discharge ports signals congestion (latent supply); widespread offshore lay-up signals oversupply. The signal is the change over time, not the level.
Idle tonnage share
DWT-weighted, by segment.
Where the idle ships are
Vessel count at anchor, moored in port, or stopped offshore.
Ballast ratio: tonnage sailing empty
A ballast vessel is running light, empty and seeking cargo, the classic tonnage-supply signal. Each ship is referenced to its own observed draught envelope (the deepest and shallowest it has ridden on AIS), so no unreliable registered draught is involved. A rising ballast share means more effective tonnage chasing fewer cargoes, a softer freight market. Tracked from 104 days of operational-draught history and growing.
Ballast share over time
Daily share of tracked vessels riding in ballast, by segment.
Method & caveats
- Slow-steaming is the mean AIS speed-over-ground of vessels making way (SOG > 3 kn) against a vetted per-segment design speed, not inferred from the noisy live feed. The mean is taken over that underway subset, which is smaller than the n fresh speed fixes shown on the coverage badge (a segment mostly idle at anchor rests on fewer underway samples). The index is capped at 40 to 120% of design for robustness.
- Idle share flags vessels at anchor or moored (nav status) or stopped (SOG ≤ 0.5 kn), cross-checked against speed. Anchorage near ports is congestion (latent supply), not lay-up.
- Ballast ratio references each vessel to its own observed operational-draught envelope in AIS voyage history (min→max), so it needs no registered draught: a ship near its own minimum draught is in ballast, near its maximum is laden. Only ships with a real observed range (≥ 2 m, ≥ 5 readings) contribute, so it's a representative share of active tonnage, never extrapolated to the whole fleet. The signal is the change over time.
- A live AIS snapshot, refreshed daily. Week-on-week deltas use the rolling snapshot history.
- Demand (ton-miles) is out of scope here: these are supply-side deployment signals only.