Glossary


Arrival: Coming of a vessel at a port to load or offload cargo or passengers or to avoid some danger.

Box/Trailer: Large transport vehicle with a box or structure for moving cargo on wheels and without its own means of propulsion and designed to be towed by a truck or tractor.

Car Carrier: A ship designed for the transport of vehicles that are embarked and disembarked through a built-in ramp-way, which is extended from the stern or the side of these ships to the wharf, allowing the vehicles to be driven on and off.

Cargo: Shipment or effects and merchandise to be transported from one port to another that is loaded and stowed on a vessel.

Cellular vessel: Ship equipped with fixed or portable guides for the exclusive transport of containers.

Container: Box or structure specially built to move cargo with a re-usable character where merchandise is packed and transported from point-to-point as a unit and is loaded and offloaded with a crane.

Containerized Cargo: Cargo loaded and offloaded in containers.

Containership: Specialized vessel transporting containers.

Countries: Countries of the Greater Caribbean area and those that are connected with through maritime services.

Cruise Ship: Vessel for international crossings with passengers lodged on board participating in a group program and with temporary stopovers at one or more different ports. During the crossing, the vessel does not normally take on or disembark other passengers, nor load or offload any cargo.

Draught: Draft. It is the submerged depth of a vessel in the water. In a port, it is the height of the water surface over the bottom.

Foreign Trade:  Exchange of goods across maritime transportation mode from one country to another.

Frequency:  It is the periodicity that the service calls in a port, expressed in days.

General Cargo: Cargo in solid, liquid or gaseous form that is packed or not packed and that can be treated as a unit and is loaded or offloaded using a crane.

Gran Caribe: Geographical area comprising the Caribbean Islands, the Caribbean coast of Central America, the North Coast of South America and the Mexican Gulf Coast.

Liquefied Natural Gas Carrier: Specialized vessel for the transport of liquid gas.

Liquid Bulk Cargo: Liquid cargo loaded or offloaded using pipes and/or hoses.

Liquid Bulk Vessel: Specialized vessel for the transport of liquid products like chemicals, mineral oil and vegetable oil.

Metric tons: A unit of mass equal to 1,000 kg (2,205 lb).

Multipurpose: Ship transporting diverse goods as general, bulk and containerized cargo, and even small tanks, and regularly carry their own cranes for loading and unloading.

Number of ships: It is the total number of ships that serve the service.

Oil Tanker: A merchant vessel designed exclusively for the bulk transport of oil.

Passenger: A person traveling on a vessel that is not part of the crew.

Port: Geographic and economic unit of a locality with land or water-based natural or artificial infrastructure and facilities for the carrying out of port activities.

Ports of Call:  Any port within the service, where the ship stops to load or to unload.

Reefer Plug Capacity: The sum of plugs for refrigerated containers available in a ship fleet in a given service.

Reefer Vessel: Ship conditioned for the transport of merchandise in storerooms with low temperatures for preserving it.

Roll on roll off (Ro –Ro): Operation of transfer on wheels.

Ro-Ro Cargo: Cargo that is loaded or offloaded on a rolling surface by highway vehicles, trailers or box/trailer on their own wheels or wheels added for this purpose using a maritime-overland transport ramp.

Ro-Ro Vessel: Ship designed for transport of box/trailers and vehicles loaded and offloaded using a maritime-overland transport ramp. 

Service: Refers to the name of the route or itinerary that a shipping line offers to users or cargo owners to transport goods to and from the ports of the Greater Caribbean.

Solid Bulk Cargo: Solid material loaded directly into the cargo spaces of a ship without any intermediate form of containment or packing and is loaded or offloaded with a crane or in combination with conveyors.

Solid Bulk Vessel: Specialized vessel for the transport of solid bulk products.

TEU: Normalized unit based on a 20-foot long ISO container (6.10 meters) that is used as a statistical measure of traffic flows or capacities. A normalized 40-foot Series 1 ISO container is equivalent to 2 TEU. Mobile boxes less than 20 feet correspond to 0.75 TEU, those longer than 20 but shorter than 40 feet are 1.5 TEU, and those longer than 40 feet are 2.25 TEU.

Total Capacity in TEU: It is the sum of the capacity of the vessel fleet, expressed in TEU, that makes up a certain service.

Type of Cargo: Segment of merchandise moved at ports according to its form and physical characteristics (General, Containerized, Ro-Ro, Bulk Liquid, Bulk Solid, Others).

Type of vessel: Classification of the vessel according to the load it carries.