Reading dwell at Poti without the terminal’s own average

The number most importers quote in a Tbilisi meeting is a dwell average they did not watch. It is useful for a slide. It is poor for a family of boxes that sat through a Friday in Poti while the truck was still a rumour.

When we map dwell, we ask for a vessel week, not a quarter. We match each bill of lading to a gate time if the host can produce one, and to a photograph of a pile if they cannot. Hours then fall into three crude piles: hours that belong to a document still being written, hours that belong to a truck that has not arrived, and hours that belong to a weekend the yard staffs thinly.

The third pile is the one finance rarely budgets. A box that “left the vessel on Thursday” can still be in the same stack on Sunday evening. That is not a mystery of the Caucasus. It is a closed lane and a driver who will not be paid to wait in it.

If your packing list skips a week, we will not fill it with the average. The map will show a hole. That hole is often the only honest line in the meeting.