Utilisation

Utilization is the share of a ship’s available time that earns revenue, the on-hire or laden time as a percentage of total calendar time. Off-hire, ballast positioning, idle waiting, and drydocking all cut it. Pools and large fleets raise utilization by chaining cargoes to reduce ballast and idle days, which lifts the fleet TCE without any change in the freight rate. In liner and container terms utilization also means the fill factor of slot or box capacity per sailing. It is a core efficiency metric because earnings scale with revenue-earning days, not with capacity owned.