Data & methodology

Source

Every ocean carrier and non-vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) must file a manifest with U.S. Customs and Border Protection before cargo arrives, through the Automated Manifest System. Each bill of lading on that manifest names the shipper, the consignee, the notify party, the goods, the container numbers, the ports and the arrival date. Customs releases this manifest data publicly; ImportDoor licenses the feed, loads each month once it is complete, and indexes it for search and aggregation.

Coverage

• Period: shipments arriving January 2020 to July 2026. A new month is added about six weeks after it ends. The current coverage month is shown on every data page.
• Mode: ocean freight only. Air, truck and rail shipments, and goods entering through Canadian or Mexican ports, are not in bill-of-lading manifest data and do not appear.
• Direction: imports into the United States. Exports are not covered.
• Granularity: one record per bill of lading. A single shipment can involve several containers; container counts are reported separately.

Definitions

• Importer is the consignee named on the bill of lading: the party the goods are delivered to in the United States. It is usually the buyer, but can be a freight forwarder, a customs broker or a distribution center.
• Supplier is the shipper named on the bill of lading: the party that handed the goods to the carrier abroad. It is usually the manufacturer or exporter, and sometimes a logistics provider acting for one.
• Product is the six-digit Harmonized System code declared for the goods, labelled with the U.S. tariff description. Shipments without a usable code are counted in totals but not in product pages.
• Shipments on a profile page is the number of bill-of-lading records naming that entity over the full coverage period.
• Trend compares the most recent twelve months of volume with the twelve before them.

Confidential importers

An importer can ask Customs to withhold its name from public manifests. Its shipments remain in the data with the consignee shown as not available, so they still count toward product, country and port totals but no longer appear under the company’s name. When a profile’s records stop abruptly, the page says so under its monthly chart rather than leaving the reader to guess.

Name matching

Manifests are typed by hand at thousands of carriers, so the same company appears under spelling variants. ImportDoor merges close variants of the same name into one profile and redirects the retired spellings to it. It does not merge legally distinct entities, so a parent company and its subsidiaries have separate profiles.

Limitations

• Manifests do not carry declared values or duties paid, so ImportDoor reports volumes, not dollars.
• Product descriptions are the carrier’s free text and vary in detail; the HS code is the reliable classification.
• A record is dated by arrival at the U.S. port, not by departure or by sale.
• Confidential importers and shipments consigned to a forwarder understate a buyer’s true volume.
• Counts can move slightly after a monthly load as late-filed manifests for earlier months arrive.

How to cite

Cite figures as “ImportDoor, U.S. Customs bill-of-lading data, July 2026” and link the page the figure came from. Every profile page carries a “Cite as” line in that form. The quarterly State of U.S. Imports reports are written to be quoted and carry their own period and totals. Journalists and researchers who need a custom cut can contact us.