Transportkennungen

Transportkennungen are unique identifiers assigned to individual freight units or consignments used across various modes of transport, including road, rail, sea, and air. They serve as a common reference that tracks a shipment from origin to destination, enabling efficient handling, routing, scheduling, and customs clearance. The term is particularly prevalent in German-speaking logistics and transport industries, where standardised codes facilitate interoperability between carriers, freight forwarders, and transport operators.

Typical transportkennungen include number plates on pallets, manifest numbers on containers, ULD (Unit Load Device) identifiers in air transport, or TAZ (Transportauftrag) numbers used in rail freight. The format of these identifiers usually follows ISO or national standards. For example, ISO 6346 is a global standard for container identification, assigning a unique 11-character code that includes a country prefix, owner code, serial number, and a check digit. In inland rail, the TAZ code is a 10-digit number that encodes transport mode, company, and shipment details. Air transport uses the ULD number which starts with a country code followed by a unique alphanumeric sequence.

Information embedded in a transportkennung can include owner, vehicle type, route, and weight, allowing transport operators to optimize asset utilisation and to provide real-time tracking. Customs agencies also rely on these codes for duty assessment and to monitor cross-border movements. Automated data capture, such as RFID tagging of pallets or optical recognition of container numbers, enhances accuracy and speeds up the handover process at checkpoints and freight terminals.

In summary, transportkennungen provide a standardized, globally understood means of identifying freight units across modes, improving logistics transparency, accountability, and efficiency.