What one day of delay alongside actually costs at current charter rates
Chandling and repairs are never the biggest line item — the delay they prevent is. A quick model you can share with the office.
A rough number every superintendent should have on the tip of their tongue: what does one day of delay at Douala actually cost you, all-in?
The three buckets
Charter hire, bunkers on hotel load, and port dues do not stop because your provisions are late. On a Handysize bulk carrier at recent charter rates, a fair working estimate is:
- Charter hire lost or extended: USD 12,000 – 18,000 / day
- Bunkers on hotel load: USD 2,500 – 4,000 / day
- Port dues, agency, pilotage extensions: USD 1,500 – 3,000 / day
That is roughly USD 16k – 25k per day, before anyone mentions the reputational cost of arriving late at the next load port.
What buys that day back
A properly scoped chandling requisition — one that arrives complete on the first delivery — costs a fraction of that. An afloat repair that closes overnight instead of after a 36-hour false start costs less than the hire alone.
Which means: the question is never "is this chandler the cheapest?" or "is this repair yard the cheapest?". The question is "does this vendor eliminate the day of delay?".
Where the day goes
In our experience the day gets burned in three places:
- Chasing missing paperwork at the gangway (bonded seals, gate passes)
- Waiting for a re-delivery of items that arrived short
- Waiting for the second mobilisation of a repair crew that arrived without the right consumable
All three are process failures on the shore side, not the ship side. All three are what we designed OptiFresh around eliminating.
The uncomfortable arithmetic
If switching supplier saves you one day per five calls, and you make twenty calls a year, you have paid for the switch four times over. Send us your last three requisitions and we will quote them line by line so you can do the math on your own trades.