Automate Single-Container Shipment Tracking

Small import-export businesses rely on a patchwork of carrier portals like Maersk's MyMaersk or MSC's myMSC. While these sites are accurate, they do not communicate with each other. This forces a logistics coordinator to spend hours each morning logging into four or five different websites, searching for container numbers, and copy-pasting status updates into a master spreadsheet.

Consider a 10-person firm importing high-value electronics. They have 8 containers on the water. A coordinator manually checks each one. A typo in a container number (a 'U' instead of a 'V') means a shipment is missed for that day's report. If a container gets a customs hold at the port of Long Beach at 8 AM, the coordinator might not discover it until the next day's manual check. This 24-hour delay can lead to thousands in drayage and demurrage fees.

Large-scale visibility platforms like project44 or FourKites are built for enterprises managing thousands of containers. Their pricing models, often starting at tens of thousands per year, are not viable for a business tracking fewer than 50 containers annually. These platforms also come with complex features like network optimization and demand forecasting that a small team does not need.

The structural issue is data fragmentation without an affordable aggregation layer. The valuable status data exists, but it is locked inside individual carrier systems. Enterprise software solves this with high-cost, high-complexity platforms. This leaves a gap for smaller businesses that need a simple, reliable way to get a single view of their shipments without paying for features they will never use.

The engagement would start with a discovery audit to map every carrier, port, and freight forwarder you work with. We would analyze each of their websites and APIs to determine the most reliable way to extract container status, location, and ETA data. You would receive a scope document that defines the exact data points to be collected and the logic for alerts, which you approve before any build work begins.

The core of the system would be a Python service running on AWS Lambda, scheduled to run every 15 minutes. For carriers that offer an API, the service uses `httpx` for efficient, asynchronous data retrieval. For carriers with only a web portal, Syntora uses Playwright to run a headless browser that logs in and navigates the site just as a human would. All extracted data, including timestamps and source, is stored in a Supabase Postgres database for a clean historical record.

The delivered system provides two outputs. First, a simple REST API endpoint you can use to pull the latest status for any container into your existing systems. Second, a private web dashboard built on Vercel that displays all active shipments on a map and in a table. Critical alerts, like a 'Customs Hold' or 'Final Discharge', would trigger an immediate notification to your team's Slack channel or email.