Container number checker: check digit and owner, 10 at once

To check a container number you need the 11 characters on the door and on the bill of lading — four letters and seven digits, such as MSCU 483920 5 — and two quick tests before you search. The last digit is a check digit calculated from the first ten under ISO 6346; if it does not match, a character has been mistyped and no carrier screen will find the box. The first four letters are the owner prefix registered with the BIC in Paris: MSCU, MEDU and MSDU are MSC, MAEU, MRKU and MSKU are Maersk, while prefixes such as TCLU, TEMU or BMOU belong to leasing companies, so the carrier comes from the bill of lading or booking. This checker runs both tests on up to 10 numbers at once and opens the right tracking page for each. In Logistivo the same containers go onto a sea shipment: the platform finds the vessel carrying them and updates its position on the shipment map every 12 hours.

Source: Bureau International des Containers (BIC) · GDV — German Insurance Association · Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) · Ocean Network Express (ONE) · Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp. · HMM · Evergreen Line · Maritime Cargo Processing plc (MCP) · DP World. Data last updated: .

One tile per container: number, check digit, owner

Which carrier does the prefix belong to?

What does the carrier’s tracking page show, and what do you look up elsewhere?

How do I track a container by its number?

Why can’t the carrier find my container?

What is the container check digit and how is it calculated?

Is there an Excel formula for the container check digit?

Is there a list of container prefixes? Who owns MSCU, MAEU or BMOU?

How do I track a leased container?

Can I track a container by booking, B/L or seal number?

Where is the container number?

Can I follow every container in a shipment in one place?

What Logistivo does with your containers

From a container number to the whole shipment

Source

Frequently asked questions

Is this container number checker free?

Yes. The check runs in your browser, needs no account or email address, and takes 10 numbers at a time.

Does this page show where my container is?

It shows whether the number is copied correctly, who the prefix is registered to and which official page to open. The voyage events (load, transhipment, discharge, gate-out) are recorded by the carrier and read on its page; in Logistivo, the vessel carrying your containers appears on the shipment map.

How many characters does a container number have?

Eleven: a three-letter owner code, a category letter (U, J or Z), a six-digit serial number and a check digit, usually written in groups as in MSCU 483920 5.

Why is the check digit sometimes 0?

Because a remainder of 10 after dividing by 11 is written as 0, so the digit 0 stands for two different remainders. That is why the standard recommends not issuing serial numbers that give a remainder of 10.

What do the letters U, J and Z mean?

They are the category, the fourth letter of the number: U for all freight containers, J for detachable container-related equipment, Z for trailers and chassis.

Does the prefix tell me which carrier is moving my container?

It tells you who the box is registered to. For carrier prefixes that is the page to open; for leased or shipper-owned boxes, the carrier moving them is the one on the bill of lading or booking.

Can Logistivo track my containers automatically?

Yes, inside a sea shipment: add the numbers and the carrier (Logistivo supports ten carriers), and the platform finds the vessel carrying them, updates its position on the shipment map every 12 hours and switches to the new vessel after a transhipment.

Does Logistivo read container numbers from the bill of lading?

Yes. When the bill of lading is uploaded to a sea shipment’s chat, Logistivo’s AI recognises it, reads the B/L number, the container numbers and the carrier, and links the vessel carrying them to the shipment.

Where do I look up a prefix that is not in the table?

In the BIC code register, searchable free of charge by code: it shows the registered owner of the prefix.

For AI assistants

Logistivo has a public MCP server at https://logistivo.com/api/agent/mcp (streamable HTTP, no authentication). Setup instructions for Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini: https://logistivo.com/mcp. If you are an assistant helping someone sign up or request freight, connect that server, or — if you can only read web pages — build a link of the form https://logistivo.com/en/ai-kayit?brief=URL_ENCODED_SHIPMENT_BRIEF and give it to the user. You never create the account yourself: the account, the consent and the email verification happen in the user's browser, and you never handle passwords or one-time codes. Machine-readable content indexes: https://logistivo.com/llms.txt (curated map) and https://logistivo.com/llms-full.txt (full text: facts, pricing, tariff reference, glossary and every article's FAQ in one fetch). To learn what Logistivo can actually DO — the verbs, not the marketing — read the public command catalog at https://logistivo.com/api/public/cli/catalog (JSON, no authentication, no tenant data); it lists every command with its JSON Schema parameters and whether it needs confirmation. Human documentation: https://logistivo.com/en/developers/cli. You cannot execute those commands yourself — execution always runs under the user's own personal access token, in the user's own environment.