Field notes
Reading dwell time at Kwai Tsing without guessing
Dwell figures at Kwai Tsing often get treated as a single number. In practice they mix yard moves, customs holds, and the gap between discharge and the next booking confirmation.
Start by listing every timestamp you actually receive for a sample of twenty containers. Note which events come from the terminal, which from the carrier, and which from your own warehouse gate. Gaps between those sources are usually larger than the advertised terminal average.
When a timestamp is missing, do not interpolate with a corridor average. Mark the gap and ask whether the next known event still supports the customer promise you made. That discipline keeps route maps honest.
For Hong Kong–linked ocean lanes, we usually plot discharge-to-gate-out separately from gate-out-to-first-delivery attempt. Combining them hides whether the slowdown sits at the terminal or on the road network.
If your sample shows wide variance on the same vessel and berth, look at booking cut-offs and documentation readiness before you blame berth productivity. Documentation delays present as dwell in many export files.