Two ways to partner
Data partner
Each month you contribute anonymized line-item invoices for your ocean container imports. In return you get a private report comparing your customers’ fees with the published benchmarks, port by port and fee by fee, and benchmarks for your own pricing that draw on more than your own book. We never name a data partner or tie a figure to one.
Referral partner
You receive quote requests from importers who have just read the benchmarks for their port and want the fees in writing. Each request carries the lane, volume, timing and goods, and goes to you alone, never to a list. You pay a commission only on freight business you win: no fee to join and no charge per request, and nothing tied to customs brokerage.
You can be both.
Who can join
- An ocean transportation intermediary licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission (NVOCC or ocean freight forwarder), in good standing, with its bond on file.
- A licensed US customs broker. Every referral partner clears customs in house, so the importer deals with one company.
- Cargo and liability insurance.
- FMCSA broker authority, if you arrange US trucking as a broker.
- For data partners: ocean container import invoices with charge codes, invoice dates and the discharge port or rail ramp, from enough importers that no one customer stands out, and the right under your customer terms to share them in anonymized form.
The standards every referral partner agrees to
Importers see these promises next to every quote form:
- Reply within one business day.
- Itemize drayage, chassis, port and customs fees, and put free time and demurrage and detention terms in writing.
- Contact the importer by email or a manual call about their request only: no texts, autodialers or recorded voices.
- Use the importer’s details only to quote and serve them. Never resell or pass on a request.
- Tell us whether each request became business, so commissions are right.
What we promise every data partner
- Aggregates only. We never publish or share your records, only figures that pass the publication rules: no importer above a fixed share of any figure, and a minimum number of importers behind every port.
- No names. Customers are identified by one-way codes, never by name, and we never name you.
- Kept apart. Record-level files never touch the website or its code. They are aggregated in a private, temporary workspace and deleted after each refresh.
- Yours to stop. Leave whenever you like. Figures already published stay published.
- In writing. We sign a data agreement before the first file.
What we promise every referral partner
Every request comes with the importer’s instruction to send it to you, recorded with the wording they saw. No partner, including your competitors, can buy a figure, a mention or a better place in the data, and requests are matched by lane, port, mode and service, never by the size of a fee.
How to apply
- Tell us about your company with the form on this page.
- We check licenses and insurance and talk through lanes, data and terms.
- We sign a partner agreement, plus a data agreement for a data partner, and start.
Questions
Will you name us on the site? No. Data partners stay anonymous. When we pass a quote request, the importer learns who you are when you contact them.
Can we see another partner’s data? No. You see your own figures and the published benchmarks, like everyone else.
What if we stop? Requests stop at once. Commissions on business already won follow the agreement.