carrier_recommendation
Recommends a carrier or alliance for a shipping lane based on your priority for reliability, frequency, or cost, using updated 2025-26 alliance data.
Instructions
Recommend WHICH CARRIER or ALLIANCE to sail with on a lane — the shipper's third decision after 'when to book' and 'which mode'. Carriers and their alliances differ enormously by corridor in coverage, schedule reliability and network breadth, so this ranks the ones that actually serve YOUR corridor and recommends 2-3 with the reasoning. Models the 2025-26 alliance realignment (NOT the pre-2025 map): GEMINI COOPERATION (Maersk + Hapag-Lloyd, live Feb 2025, a hub-and-spoke model explicitly targeting >90% on-time), OCEAN ALLIANCE (CMA CGM + COSCO + Evergreen + OOCL — the broadest direct-call network & highest frequency), PREMIER ALLIANCE (ONE + HMM + Yang Ming, the former THE Alliance minus Hapag, strong transpacific), and MSC operating standalone (the world's largest fleet, vast breadth, selective slot deals) — plus niche independents (ZIM's Asia→US-East express, Wan Hai intra-Asia). For each option it returns the EXPECTED ON-TIME PERFORMANCE on this lane (the corridor's market OTP refined by the carrier's own reliability band and how much it governs the string — so Gemini surfaces ~90% vs ~55% market average on Asia-Europe), the estimated SAILING FREQUENCY (sailings/week) and network breadth, a cost-positioning read, an overall fit SCORE, and the trade-off. The ranking FLIPS with your PRIORITY: 'reliability' floats Gemini up; 'frequency' or 'cost' floats Ocean Alliance / MSC up; a carrier with no network on the corridor is NOT recommended there. It also REFINES the lane OTP to the top pick so you can feed it into your p90 lead-time buffer. Every figure is a MODELED INDICATIVE BAND (capacity shares ~Alphaliner picture, reliability ~Sea-Intelligence rankings, corridor strengths) — NOT a carrier quote, a filed tariff or a weekly KPI (regla 7). PREMIUM: pay per call with x402 (USDC on Base) or set a prepaid key (FREIGHT_PULSE_KEY). Same UN/LOCODE port normalization as get_spot_rate.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| origin_port | Yes | Origin port (city name, UN/LOCODE, or 'City, Country'). Same resolution as get_spot_rate. | |
| dest_port | Yes | Destination port (city name, UN/LOCODE, or 'City, Country'). | |
| priority | No | What the shipper optimizes for: 'reliability' (on-time, favours Gemini), 'frequency' (sailings/week, favours Ocean/MSC), 'cost' (cheapest-leaning), or 'balanced' (default). Synonyms accepted. | |
| container_type | No | Container size '20ft'/'40ft'/'40HC' (informational for the lane label). Optional; defaults to '40ft'. | |
| ship_date | No | Intended ship date (ISO 'YYYY-MM-DD'). Sets the corridor's market-baseline OTP (Cape diversion + seasonal blank-sailing pressure) the ranking is refined from. Optional; defaults to today. |