General
Cut-Off Time
The deadline by which cargo, documentation, or the VGM declaration must reach the carrier or terminal to be accepted for a given sailing.
In depth
There is rarely one cut-off but several, each with its own deadline: a documentation or SI cut-off, a VGM cut-off, and a physical cargo or gate-in cut-off, typically falling in that order ahead of the ETD. Missing any single one is usually enough to have the container rolled to the next sailing, even if everything else was ready. Cut-offs also tighten around holidays and during congestion. Treating the earliest of them as the real deadline, rather than the sailing date, is the way shippers avoid rolling.
Key points
- Separate deadlines exist for documents, VGM, and physical cargo
- Missing any one of them can roll the container
- Cut-offs tighten around holidays and during congestion
- Plan to the earliest cut-off, not to the ETD