This displays the 7 day moving average of total Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) cleared by U.S. Customs out of a given port. The TEUs are calculated from each shipment of containerized cargo that moves through a given port and is cleared by U.S. Customs. This TEU count gives users a better idea of exactly how much volume in TEUs is ready to enter surface transportation markets, and has been cleared by U.S. Customs as ready to proceed to a given inland destination (by rail or drayage/truck). The CSTEU value for a given day represents the containers cleared that day and ready to leave the port, not containers arriving at the port.
Freight forwarders, NVOCCs, ocean carriers, port authorities, terminals, rail/intermodal companies, financial institutions, brokers, truckload carriers, warehousing companies, and anyone else interested in containerized import volumes.
When a shipment is being cleared for entry into the U.S., it is documented using the bill of lading which serves as documentation for the financial transaction between the buyer (U.S. importer of record) and the shipper (seller) in a foreign country. This information is reported by U.S. customs on average four to five days after the date that the shipment was actually cleared. Using this data, users see how U.S. import volumes are trending before they are officially reported by each port authority in their monthly summary of volume statistics (usually comes out around the 15th of the following month.
This index was created with granularities that represent the truckload market where each shipment was cleared by customs as the port of entry into the US.
Example: A user wants to see the amount of containerized import volume entering the U.S. and impacting surface-side transportation capacity and volumes in the US (drayage, intermodal/rail, truckload, etc.) They would look up CSTEU.USA (for all US TEU Volumes) to see the 7 day moving average as it is being cleared through U.S. Customs.
