◆ Maritime · Time-critical · High-value

A ship waiting for a part is losing $38,000 a day.

Gangway Direct turns a fleet's own crew rotation into its emergency parts network. The part flies with the engineer who was already joining that vessel — under 24 hours, below the courier price, and documented at every border.

See how it works → The case for it
$10–50k
Lost charter hire, per day off-hire
ShipUniverse
13 : 1
Cost of a 3-day wait vs. expedited air
Industry example — unverified
112,500
Vessels in the world fleet
UNCTAD RMT 2025
<24h
Door to deck, intercontinental
Gangway Direct target
4 days freight, buying the part its own journey under 24 hours carried by the engineer joining that ship on a flight the fleet had already paid for HAMBURG OEM shelf SINGAPORE the vessel
Same part, same deadline. One journey has to be bought. The other is already in the air.
The problem

Shipping has an AOG problem. It just doesn't call it that.

Aviation has spent thirty years quantifying what a grounded aircraft costs, and built an entire logistics industry around preventing it. Shipping has the same problem under a different name — off-hire — and almost none of the same infrastructure. A vessel alongside in Singapore waiting on a fuel pump from Hamburg burns charter hire, bunkers, berth fees and schedule integrity every hour. The part costs €38,000. The waiting costs more than that every day.

01

Freight is too slow

Express integrators move a 25 kg part in one to three days — when customs behaves. For a vessel with a berth window closing in twenty-six hours, one to three days is the same as never.

02

Charter is too expensive

An intercontinental light-jet leg runs €12,000–60,000. It is used, but only when someone senior has already lost the argument about why the part wasn't moved sooner.

03

The middle is manual

On-board couriers fill the gap at €2,500–6,500 a job — quoted by phone and email, hours at a time, with the compliance file assembled by hand each time.

“A large containership waiting three days for a part costs roughly €250,000. Expedited air freight for the same part costs about €18,800.”

Industry example surfaced in research — flagged for verification before use in a pitch.
The model

Two things every ship manager already knows, that never meet.

Crewing knows who is flying to which vessel, on which date, on a ticket the company already bought. Technical purchasing knows which vessel is waiting on a part and what that is costing. These live in different departments, in different systems, and nobody owns the overlap.

Gangway Direct owns the overlap. A manager with a hundred vessels turns over roughly 85 crew movements a week — every one of them a cleared, contracted person flying to a known ship with an empty baggage allowance. That is not a courier network we have to go and build. It already exists, and it is already paid for.

Why nobody has taken it

A courier company cannot ask a ship manager for its crew schedule — it has no reason to be in that conversation. Gangway Direct arrives already holding the manager's parts problem, which is the reason to be in it. The barrier here is not capital. It is the relationship.

T1

The rotation

Joining crew, relieving officers, superintendents and OEM engineers already flying to the vessel. Target 50–60% of volume — the cheapest, fastest-clearing, highest-trust tier, and the one that carries the margin.

They carry their employer's property to their own workplace, on travel the employer arranged — not a stranger's package for a fee. That distinction removes the airline and security obstacles that killed every consumer courier marketplace, and it means vetting already happened upstream, at crewing.
T2

Contracted couriers

Registered courier businesses and vetted repeat contractors, engaged when no rotation fits the window. Target 25–35% of volume.

The established on-board courier model: Gangway Direct is the contracting carrier, goods move under an air waybill, a licensed broker clears at destination.
T3

Fallback freight

Integrator express, auto-quoted alongside every job so the customer always sees the real trade-off. Target 10–20% — and not a failure state.

Gangway Direct commits to the deadline, not to a mechanism. This is also why Gangway Direct is never an empty marketplace — the failure mode that kills two-sided platforms in their first winter.
The supply

We don't recruit couriers. We read the rotation.

Crew change is planned weeks ahead, not improvised. The vessel, the port, the date, the flight and the agent are all written down before anyone boards — and the person is already document-verified, because a seafarer cannot join a ship without it. Gangway Direct's job is to see that schedule and make it usable.

01

The spreadsheet

Most managers can export a crew-change plan as a CSV today. Enough to run the entire pilot. We start here, in week one.

02

The travel desk

Marine travel agencies book the tickets and hold the flight data. One relationship can cover many managers — the highest-leverage integration in the business.

03

The crewing system

Where the planned rotation lives. Often SFTP and CSV rather than an API. This is the upgrade, never the dependency.

04

The carrier

Crew declare their own joining trip in the app. The backstop — and the only route that reaches OEM technicians who are on nobody's system.

◆

Why it compounds

Each connected fleet adds its own rotation to the visible supply, and rotations overlap — Greek and German managers fly into the same twelve ports. Coverage improves with every customer added, subject to consent. A competitor could hire a thousand couriers tomorrow and still not know who is joining the Northern Trader on Thursday.

◆

What we still have to prove

How often a planned crew change lands in a port where a vessel has an open urgent defect. Nobody has ever measured this, and it decides the size of tier one. It is answerable in a week from one cooperative manager's last twelve months — and it is the first thing we go and do.

Three rules we hold ourselves to

Crew opt in individually, per job, with a real right to decline. Payment goes to the person, never the employer — the moment carriage becomes an unpaid duty, handover quality collapses. And the carrier carries no personal risk: the undertaking indemnifies anyone who follows the documented procedure. If a seafarer believes they could personally be fined or detained, no payout recruits them — and they would be right to think so.

What we actually sell

Not carriage. Compliance, evidence and a deadline with a price on it.

Anyone can match a part to a traveller. What nobody has built is the layer that makes it legal, insurable and auditable — and that layer is the only thing in this business worth defending.

◆

A quote in ninety seconds

All-in: courier, flight, excess baggage, clearance, duty and insurance — against the customer's own off-hire rate. Incumbents take fifteen minutes to two hours and quote by email.

◆

A compliance file that holds

Export-control classification, sanctions screening on vessel IMO, flag, owner, manager and beneficial owner, the ship's-spares-in-transit declaration, and the master's receipt that closes the customs file.

◆

Insurance that pays

Full declared value, underwritable precisely because the vetting and the chain of custody make the risk legible. Sealed handover, photographs, dual signature, hash-chained evidence.

Why ship's spares in transit matters

Parts consigned to a named vessel with its IMO number, destined for a ship in international trade, can move without import duty or tax — they are in transit and leave again on the vessel. It requires an invoice marked “ship spares in transit”, a matching packing list, a ship's agent and the master's signed receipt. Done right it is a significant cost and speed advantage. Done wrong it is duties, an inspection hold, and a courier answering questions at a customs desk. Gangway Direct's product is doing it right, every time.

Where we sit

Below the courier floor. Above freight reliability.

OptionLong-haul costTransitQuoteCompliance
Express freight
DHL · FedEx · UPS		 €450–1,8001–3 daysInstantGeneric
Gangway Direct€1,800–4,500<24h 90 secondsBuilt in, auditable
On-board courier
time:matters · OBC ONE · Air Time Critical		 €2,500–6,500<24h15 min – 2h, manualManual, broker-dependent
Air charter€12,000–60,000HoursHoursManual

Said plainly

This category is not empty. time:matters has Lufthansa behind it and more than a thousand couriers in forty-six countries; OBC ONE claims fifteen hundred and already specialises in ship spares. Gangway Direct does not beat them on network size and should never claim to. It beats them on speed of quote, price — because tier-one supply is already flying — and on documentation. Any version of this pitch that claims an empty market will be dismissed by the first person in the room who knows the industry.

Business model

Per shipment, then recurring.

01

Per-shipment fee

€1,800–4,500 all-in on long-haul, under the courier floor. Target contribution 40–50% before fixed costs.

02

Fleet Assurance subscription

€2,000–6,000 per vessel per year: response SLA, a pre-cleared courier pool on the fleet's lanes, standing sanctions screening, and a quarterly downtime-avoided report.

03

Insurance margin

On declared value, once a programme is bound with an underwriter.

Why the subscription is the important line

Every consumer courier marketplace that died — PiggyBee, Airmule, Nimber — died of the same thing: people needed it too rarely. PiggyBee's founder called low repeat usage “the achilles heel”. A fleet of forty vessels has an urgent part problem most weeks, and a subscription turns that from a sporadic emergency purchase into recurring revenue. It is also the line that makes this fundable.

What has to be true

The five things we go and find out before building anything.

This plan has a validation phase with a real stop condition. If insurance cannot be bound, or counsel says the crew model doesn't hold, the right answer is to stop — not to build through a red light.

01

Can the risk be insured?

€50,000 of hand-carried declared value, at a rate the unit economics survive. Without a bound policy there is no business.

02

Does the crew model hold at the border?

Customs and export-control counsel on the main corridors: EU, Singapore, UAE, US.

03

How often does this actually happen?

There is no public data on emergency spares volume. Ten superintendent interviews is the only honest way to find out — and it tests the repeat rate that killed the predecessors.

04

What do the incumbents really charge?

Four real quotes on four real lanes. Every pricing assumption rests on this.

05

Will a ship manager sign?

Two or three letters of intent for the pilot, before a line of product code is written.

→

Then: thirty shipments by hand

A shared inbox, a spreadsheet and humans doing the matching. Software only where the customer can see it. Automate what the concierge phase proves.

Layer two

The product, as it would work on day one.

A working mockup of the sender console. Click through it — the request form, the compliance gates, the courier match and the live chain of custody are all interactive.

◆ Simulated data · nothing is sent anywhere
app.gangwaydirect.com/fleet

Fleet operations

Hapag Marine Services · 41 vessels under management
Open defects
3
1 critical
Exposure today
$38,400
per day, at risk
In transit
3
all on schedule
Saved this quarter
€412k
downtime avoided
● CriticalBerthed

MV Northern Trader

IMO 9452781 · PSA Singapore, Berth 14 · M/E fuel pump failed 07:52 LT
26h 04m
berth window
● In transit

MV Baltic Dawn

IMO 9388142 · Turbo cartridge · Rotterdam → Fujairah
14:20
ETA gangway
◇ Courier assigned

MV Adriatic Star

IMO 9511023 · PLC module · Hamburg → Piraeus
T-6h
to collection

New urgent request

MV Northern Trader · IMO 9452781
Required. Drives ship's-spares-in-transit treatment and sanctions screening on owner, manager and beneficial owner.
Used to price the decision, not just the shipment.

Compliance screening

Four blocking gates before a price is given
◌
Commodity classification

HS code and export-control screen — EAR / ECCN, ITAR, EU dual-use 2021/821

queued
◌
Dangerous goods

Lithium cells, pressure vessels, flares, extinguisher cartridges, lubricants

queued
◌
Sanctions screening

Vessel IMO, flag, registered owner, technical manager, beneficial owner, consignee

queued
◌
Route legality

Corridor rules, licence requirements, courier nationality and visa eligibility

queued

Three ways to make the window

All-in, including duty, clearance and €38,000 of cover
T1

Crew movement — Mara K.

2nd engineer joining MV Northern Trader · LH778 dep 09:55 · arr 03:05+1 · 32 kg allowance free
€4,180
19h · 6h spare
T2

Contracted courier

Professional OBC · SQ327 dep 12:40 · arr 06:50+1
€5,940
22h · 3h spare
T3

Express freight fallback

Integrator priority · earliest arrival 3 days
€1,340
misses window

The decision, priced

Freight is €2,840 cheaper and arrives three days late. Three days of off-hire at your rate is €115,200. Taking tier one saves €112,360 against waiting — and that line, not the shipping cost, is what goes in the quarterly report.

RD-4472 · in transit

Fuel pump → MV Northern Trader · Mara K. · LH778
Hamburg
Singapore
✈
Elapsed
01h 22m
Arrives
03:05 SGT
Seal
Intact
Buffer
6h 55m
Chain of custody
Request screened

08:16 CET · four gates passed

Courier assigned

08:24 CET · Tier 2 clearance verified

Sealed handover

09:40 CET · seal RD-88241, 4 photos, dual signature, geotagged

In the air

11:05 CET · LH778 · flight data bound to shipment

Customs — ship's spares

Declaration pre-lodged · agent on standby

Gangway delivery

Master's receipt closes the file

Compliance file · RD-4472

Exports as one signed PDF bundle for insurers, auditors and customs
Commercial invoice — marked ship spares in transit✓ lodged
Packing list — item-for-item match✓ lodged
Ship's spares declaration — vessel + IMO✓ lodged
Agent letter of authority — Inchcape SG✓ on file
Export-control classification record✓ cleared
Sanctions screening — 6 entities✓ no match
Custody evidence — 4 photos, hash-chained✓ sealed
Certificate of insurance — €38,000✓ bound
Master's receiptpending delivery

Why this is the product

Matching is not defensible — anyone can build it. An evidence chain that an underwriter will price against and a customs officer will accept takes years to earn and is what a ship manager's audit actually asks for.

Downtime avoided

Q3 2026 · Hapag Marine Services · 41 vessels
Shipments
31
across 14 vessels
On-time rate
100%
no missed windows
Spend
€118k
all-in
Downtime avoided
€412k
3.5× return

This report is the renewal conversation

It is also the sales asset. One documented pilot with a measured saving is worth more than any amount of outreach — in an industry where most decision-makers start with a referral, the case study is the go-to-market.