Ship Chartering Position List

FleetMon continuously maintains a list of ships reported as "awaiting orders" or "heading for new orders". The database can easily be filtered by vessel type, size, and flags. Also, it is shown since when this status was reported.

The Ship Chartering Position List concerns ships in the tramp business (e.g., do not have fixed schedules but are chartered on a voyage basis). Between two orders, there can always be idle times. The vessels are then temporarily out of service and wait in an anchoring position (during which time they are also referred to as laid up vessels). As a destination, they enter “for order” or “waiting for orders”. They are then added to our Ship Chartering Position List.

Shipping companies and cargo owners usually charter vessels with the help of brokers. There are different types of brokers. Owners broker represent the fleet of certain owners, while chartering brokers represent cargo. In addition, some competitive brokers can represent both sides depending on actual contracts. The brokers send lists to each other to find possible matching combinations. The list of ships is called the “Position List”. For more clarity, the addition of “Chartering” has been added by FleetMon.

The counterpart to this are vessels in the liner business. As a rule, only bulkers, tankers, and special ships are deployed in the tramp business for cases where a customer has a whole shipload to transport. Container ships are likely to be among them only in exceptional cases, as they are usually chartered out on a long-term basis and then deployed in liner services. All other cargo-carrying vessels can also be operated in a liner constellation.