Liftings and freight rate: a liner’s revenue
Slot turns, load factor, TEU carried, rate per TEU.
By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.
On this subject: liftings and freight rate: a liner’s revenue.Updated 5 November 2026
Part of project finance and infrastructure models, with the models, labs and guides around it.
What it does
A liner sells slots on scheduled services. Average capacity times the slot turns a year (how many boxes a slot can carry on its round voyages) is the capacity on offer; times the load factor, the TEU carried, or liftings. Revenue is liftings times the average freight rate per TEU, plus the bunker surcharge. Because the cost of sailing a ship hardly changes with how full it is, the load factor and the rate fall almost entirely to profit, which is why the rate cycle dominates a liner’s earnings.
Where it lives
The same schedule in each model that carries it, with the rows to open. Open a model in the browser, go to the sheet, and click the lines.
- Assumptions, rows 25–29: Days in the year, Slot turns a year, Load factor, base case, Average freight rate, FY0…
- Revenue, rows 6–10: Average capacity operated, Slots available a year, Load factor, Liftings…
- Revenue, rows 13–20: Freight rate, base cycle, Average freight rate, Freight revenue, Bunker adjustment factor…
What a reviewer looks for
- Revenue grown at a rate, so the fleet and load factor cannot move it.
- Closing capacity used for a year in which ships arrive and leave.
- A freight rate held at its latest level when the year was a peak or a trough.
Learn it, then build it
Vocabulary: TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit), Operating Leverage.