The Portcast platform includes easy-to-use CO2 reporting functionality, for shipments tracked on our platform. Typically, this is done at container level. However, not all shipments are container-sized. So, what are Less than Container Load (LCL) shipments, and how can you reliably calculate CO2 emissions for shipments that are not standard-sized?

What are LCL and FCL shipments?

When discussing shipment tracking, it is easy to assume container default sizes as the standard way to transport goods across the world. The standard unit sized format has revolutionized the transportation industry, ever since its invention by Malcom McLean in the 1950s.

So, when we talk about shipments, we are often talking about container-sized components being transported, either individually or in bulk. This is what’s called a Full Container Load (FCL) shipment - one that equals a container load, whatever the standard size of that container might be.

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Did you know? The Portcast platform includes metadata information on your shipments - including the size of containers (width, length and height) and the Size and Type Code as defined by ISO 6346.

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There are good reasons to use FCL shipments to transport goods: they provide faster shipping times, since there is no need for consolidation; they offer more security and reduced risk of damage, as goods are not mixed with other shipments; and they are cost-effective for larger shipments where the volume justifies renting an entire container.

However, not all shipments equal one full container load. There are many cases where the cargo does not fill an entire shipping container:

• Cases where multiple shipments from different shippers are consolidated into one container to optimise space.
• Cases where it is cost-effective for small shipments, even if it involves longer transit times due to consolidation and de-consolidation processes.
• And generally, for businesses that do not have enough cargo to fill a full container.

In these situations, where a shipment does not equal an entire container size, it is classified as Less than a Container Load (LCL). And LCL shipments, contrary to FCL, can be of almost infinitely variable sizes, weights and configurations.

This means that, for LCL shipments, it is slightly more complicated to calculate CO2 emissions, as the standards used for FCL shipments do not apply. However, Portcast has created a way to obtain reliable CO2 calculations for these non-standard shipments, using customer provided data.

How to calculate LCL emissions in the Portcast platform?

In order to be enable LCL calculations, either using the Portcast Web Application or the API suite, Portcast has leveraged another product feature - Custom data fields. These are fields that our own customers can provide, either when uploading data or during the lifetime of the container tracking cycle, and can be of many types: internal identifiers, quantities, customer identifiers, SKUs… the possibilities are endless.

Under the scope of custom data fields, there are 2 subsets of fields: