Cargo Tracking Software for Ocean and Air Freight: How Descartes Can Help
Descartes helps freight forwarders move beyond basic track and trace by turning shipment data into operational intelligence, so teams can act earlier, communicate more clearly, and scale without added complexity.
How Does Descartes Support Ocean Freight Tracking?
Ocean freight is unpredictable by nature. Vessel delays, blank sailings, port congestion, and transshipments introduce risk that forwarders must navigate to track ocean freight effectively.
Descartes helps forwarders:
Aggregate ocean carrier data
Descartes connects to a broad network of ocean carriers and data sources, collecting container and shipment level milestones in one place. This reduces reliance on individual carrier portals and manual tracking.
Normalize milestones across carriers
Gate in, loaded, departed, arrived, discharged, and available events are standardized, giving operations and customer service teams a consistent view regardless of carrier.
Monitor transshipments and rollovers
Descartes identifies missed connections, rolled containers, and route changes early, helping teams intervene before delays escalate.
Provide more reliable ETAs
Planned schedules are compared with actual events to highlight deviations and improve arrival estimates, supporting more accurate customer communication.
How Does Descartes Support Air Freight Tracking?
Air freight moves quickly, and even minor disruptions can have significant impacts. Forwarders need immediate awareness of missed uplifts, re-bookings, and arrival changes.
Descartes helps forwarders:
Deliver AWB and HAWB visibility
Track master and house air waybills, including split and partial shipments, within a single interface.
Capture critical air milestones
Booked, received, manifested, departed, arrived, customs, tendered, and delivered milestones are presented in a clear shipment timeline.
Detect time sensitive exceptions
Descartes flags missed flights, late departures, and re-bookings so teams can respond before service levels are affected.
Turn Visibility into Action with Descartes
What sets Descartes apart for freight forwarders is not just visibility, but actionability.
With Descartes, forwarders can:
Manage by exception
Teams focus only on shipments that require attention instead of manually tracking every move, improving productivity and consistency.
Enable stronger customer service
Customer service teams have immediate access to accurate shipment status and ETAs, reducing response times and status inquiries.
Integrate tracking into execution systems
Descartes integrates cargo tracking with transportation management, customer portals, and analytics, so visibility supports daily operations.
Create a single source of truth
Operations, customer service, and leadership teams all work from the same shipment data, reducing misalignment and rework.
Descartes has deep experience supporting cargo tracking and understands the operational realities of freight forwarding. Its solutions are designed to handle multimodal complexity, high shipment volumes, and the need for consistent, customer ready visibility. We turn cargo tracking from a reactive task into a strategic capability that supports service differentiation, operational efficiency, and long-term growth.