Tramping

Tramping is non-scheduled cargo shipping in which a ship, the tramp, sails wherever a single cargo charter sends it, with no fixed route or timetable, set against the liner’s published schedule. Tramps carry bulk cargoes such as coal, grain, ore, and timber under voyage or time charters fixed on the chartering market, historically the Baltic Exchange in London. The trade grew with the steam tramp from the 1870s and survives today as the dry-bulk and tanker spot market.