Large ocean freight visibility platforms have been around for years — and they serve enterprise shippers well. The question isn't whether they work. It's who they were built for, and who they consistently leave behind.
The mid-market visibility gap
Small-to-midsized freight forwarders and importers move meaningful cargo volumes — enough that exceptions and delays cause real operational pain — but not enough to justify six-figure platform contracts or dedicated visibility teams.
The challenges are familiar to anyone in logistics operations:
- Manual tracking loops: Staff spend hours logging into carrier portals, copying statuses into spreadsheets, and emailing updates. It is slow, error-prone, and does not scale.
- No proactive exception management: Without automated monitoring, a rolled container or vessel delay goes unnoticed until a customer calls — by which time corrective action is too late.
- Disconnected systems: Most mid-market forwarders run a TMS or ERP with little to no real-time carrier data. Shipment records go stale the moment they are created.
- Carrier fragmentation: A typical forwarder works across a dozen or more ocean carriers, each with its own portal, data format, and refresh cadence. Consolidating that manually is not sustainable.
- No budget for enterprise tooling: Platforms built for Fortune 500 shippers price accordingly — putting them completely out of reach for a growing freight forwarder or mid-sized importer.
"We knew exactly where our shipments were — until they left the port. After that, we were calling carriers the same as everyone else."
Why FreightLens is different
FreightLens was designed for the operational reality of growth-focused forwarders and mid-market importers. Onboarding in days, not months. Pricing that reflects the actual scale of a growing logistics business. Direct carrier API connections so your data is always current. We focus on the specific, high-impact problems your team faces every day: knowing where every container is, getting alerted when something goes wrong, and feeding accurate data into the systems you already use.
Growing carrier coverage
We are building out carrier integrations systematically, starting with the lines most commonly used by mid-market forwarders in the US trade lanes:
- Live today: Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA-CGM, ZIM, ONE Line — connected via DCSA Track & Trace APIs with real-time container event updates
- In progress: MSC, COSCO, OOCL — API integrations underway
- Pipeline: Evergreen, Yang Ming, HMM, and additional niche carriers serving specific trade lanes
- All carrier data is normalized to the DCSA 2.2 standard, so the data model is consistent regardless of which carrier moved your container
Beyond ocean: terminal and rail visibility
Ocean carrier tracking tells you where a vessel is. The critical gaps happen at the edges — at the terminal gate, the rail dray, and the inland ramp. We are building toward end-to-end visibility covering the full door-to-door journey:
Ocean Carrier Tracking
Real-time container events from ocean carriers via direct API connections. Vessel location, milestones, ETAs, and exception alerts.
Terminal Visibility
Gate-in, gate-out, and availability status from major US port terminals — starting with APM Terminals covering three of the top seven US ports.
Rail & Inland Dray
Intermodal rail tracking and inland container movements, giving visibility to the final leg that most platforms ignore entirely.
TMS / ERP Push
Automated data feeds into your existing systems — so FreightLens becomes invisible infrastructure rather than another tab to manage.
Who we are building this for
- Freight forwarders with 5 to 200 staff managing ocean shipments across multiple carriers
- Beneficial cargo owners (importers and exporters) managing their own supply chains without a large in-house logistics team
- Third-party logistics providers (3PLs) that need to offer visibility as a service to their own customers
If you are currently managing ocean visibility with carrier portals, spreadsheets, or a TMS that does not have live carrier data — FreightLens was built for exactly that situation.
See it for yourself
Get early access to FreightLens and bring visibility to your ocean shipments starting today.