Freight and Shipping Desk Academy
Twenty courses. Beginner to advanced. No course assumes what it has not taught.
The learner must be able to meet the same tonnage requirement four ways, by fixing a vessel for a single voyage, taking period coverage, chartering out controlled capacity, and hedging the exposure on paper, and state for each route the obligations it creates and the residual exposure it leaves behind.
20 courses · 100 to 130 chapters each · every chapter one 8 to 10 minute explainer · self-paced
Twenty courses in dependency order
A course may only assume capability taught by a lower-numbered course, and the level column never falls as you move down the table.
| # | Course | Level | Builds on | What this course owns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Shipping and voyage foundations | |||
| 01 | Shipping Business & Freight Markets | 1/10 | none | How the shipping industry is organised and which commercial role each party holds in a freight transaction: owner, operator, disponent owner, charterer, broker and agent. |
| 02 | Vessel Classes, Cargoes & Routes | 1/10 | 01 | Matching cargo to tonnage: vessel segments and dimensions, stowage and draught limits, port restrictions and the main trade routes each class serves. |
| 03 | Bunkers, Speed & Operating Costs | 2/10 | 01, 02 | Building the vessel cost base: fuel grades and pricing, consumption against speed, port and canal costs, and daily operating expense. |
| 04 | Freight Quotations, Worldscale & Hire Rates | 2/10 | 01, 02 | Converting between the conventions freight is quoted in: Worldscale points and flat rates, dollars per tonne, lumpsum and daily hire, and reading a rate back to a vessel day. |
| 05 | Voyage Economics & Time-Charter Equivalent | 3/10 | 02, 03, 04 | Assembling a complete voyage calculation and reducing any form of employment to a single comparable time-charter equivalent per day. |
| B | Chartering and contract execution | |||
| 06 | Voyage Chartering & Fixture Negotiation | 3/10 | 04, 05 | Negotiating and recapping a single voyage fixture from first indication to fixture note, clause by clause, including subjects and their lifting. |
| 07 | Laytime, Demurrage & Despatch | 4/10 | 05, 06 | Counting laytime from statements of fact and calculating, presenting and resisting demurrage and despatch claims. |
| 08 | Time Charter & Period Employment | 4/10 | 04, 05, 06 | The period employment obligation set: hire payment, off-hire, speed and consumption warranties, employment orders, redelivery and condition on return. |
| 09 | Contracts of Affreightment | 5/10 | 05, 06, 08 | Structuring multi-shipment tonnage commitments: nomination mechanics, lifting programmes, spread and tolerance, and shortfall consequences. |
| C | Operator economics and market practice | |||
| 10 | Ship Finance, Working Capital & Operator Liquidity | 5/10 | 03, 05, 08, 09 | Funding the freight book: bunker prepayment, the hire and freight cash cycle, claim receivables, credit lines, guarantees and the cash needed to carry paper margin. |
| 11 | Tanker Freight Practice | 6/10 | 02, 05, 06, 09 | Wet market practice: tanker segments and their cargo grades, vetting and approval, cargo measurement and contamination exposure, and tanker-specific charter party terms. |
| 12 | Dry-Bulk Freight Practice | 6/10 | 02, 05, 06, 09 | Dry market practice: bulk cargo handling and berth terms, cargo-specific loading and trimming constraints, and the dry-bulk charter party and liner terms set. |
| 13 | Freight Indices, FFAs & Settlement | 6/10 | 04, 11, 12 | Index construction and assessment, forward freight agreement mechanics, clearing, margining and index settlement against physical performance. |
| D | Curves, hedging and carbon cost | |||
| 14 | Freight Curves & Coverage Timing | 7/10 | 05, 10, 13 | Constructing the forward freight curve from index and paper prices and deciding where along it to place or release coverage. |
| 15 | Physical Freight Hedging & Route Basis | 7/10 | 12, 13, 14 | Mapping a physical freight position onto paper routes and managing the residual route, timing and vessel-class basis that remains after hedging. |
| 16 | Freight Options | 8/10 | 13, 14, 15 | Freight option valuation and the use of asymmetric payoffs to cover tonnage exposure where a linear hedge would overcommit. |
| 17 | Shipping Carbon Costs & Contract Allocation | 8/10 | 03, 08, 09 | Quantifying shipping emissions obligations as a cost per voyage and per vessel day, and allocating that cost between owner and charterer in contract terms. |
| E | Portfolio, disruption and integrated practice | |||
| 18 | Vessel Positioning, Relets & Portfolios | 9/10 | 09, 10, 15 | Positioning controlled tonnage and reletting surplus capacity across a portfolio of voyage, period and contract commitments held at once. |
| 19 | Disruption, Insurance Interfaces & Claims | 9/10 | 07, 09, 18 | Handling disruption through the insurance and charter remedy interfaces: hull and machinery, protection and indemnity, war risk, general average, and claim recovery against counterparties. |
| 20 | Integrated Freight Operator Simulation | 10/10 | 05, 15, 18, 19 | Running the full operator mandate end to end under live constraint, choosing between fixing, period cover, reletting and paper hedging, and defending each decision and its residual exposure. |
Every course states the capability it owns. The brochure carries the same table plus the chapter list behind each course, which is the quickest way to find the course that teaches the thing you cannot currently do.
The whole desk end to end, in one programme
The twenty courses take one capability at a time, in dependency order, for someone building from the ground up. The Freight Desk Master Programme does the opposite: it runs the whole freight desk front to back in a single sequence, for someone who already works on a desk and wants the shape of the job quickly rather than the long route.
Take whichever matches your starting point. They cover the same ground and several of the numbered courses draw on the same material.
Take one course, or the whole pathway
Each course stands alone. Taken in order, the twenty build one desk capability from no prior knowledge.