A UN/LOCODE is the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations: a five-character identifier for a port or place, formed from a two-letter ISO country code plus three characters for the location. NLRTM is Rotterdam, USLAX is Los Angeles, CNSHA is Shanghai.
UNECE maintains the code list, which covers tens of thousands of locations: seaports, airports, rail terminals, and inland cities. Because names are ambiguous across languages and spellings, structured systems reference locations by LOCODE instead, and the DCSA tracking standard does exactly that for every event location.
The three location letters are usually mnemonic but not guaranteed to be: they are assigned, not derived. A LOCODE identifies the place, not a specific terminal within it; large ports contain many terminals under one code.
Every port in a tracked container’s journey resolves to a LOCODE, which is what lets events from different carriers line up on one timeline. TrackingMCP’s port pages are organised by LOCODE, so /ports/nlrtm is Rotterdam and /ports/cnsha is Shanghai, with dwell and activity context per port, and the ports index lists the rest.
A UN/LOCODE is the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations: a five-character identifier for a port or place, formed from a two-letter ISO country code plus three characters for the location. NLRTM is Rotterdam, USLAX is Los Angeles, CNSHA is Shanghai.
It is the most widely used standard port code, but industries also use IATA codes for airports and carrier-internal codes. In ocean tracking data, LOCODE is the norm.
No, it identifies the port or place. Terminal-level identification needs an additional code, such as a SMDG terminal code, on top of the LOCODE.
Browse ports by UN/LOCODE →
How DCSA events use UN/LOCODE →
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