ContainerPulse Liner intelligence
Match the 4-letter prefix on any container to its operator in our liner registry of 200+ carriers.

Yang Ming

SCAC YMLU · Keelung, Taiwan · founded 1972 · Premier Alliance

Yang Ming (legal entity Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation) is a global mainline operator headquartered in Keelung, Taiwan. Founded in 1972, the line has spent 54 years building out its container service network and today operates a fleet of 91 vessels under the SCAC code YMLU. Total operated capacity stands near 720,000 TEU, placing the carrier among the recognised operators on its core trade lanes. The company holds intermodal equipment under 5 registered ISO 6346 owner prefixes, which appear on every box it owns or long-term leases.

Yang Ming is most active on the following corridors: Transpacific, Asia-Europe, Intra-Asia. Through its membership of the Premier Alliance, the carrier shares vessel capacity with ocean-network-express, HMM on East-West services. Direct customer contact is available via +886 2 2455 5151 or the carrier's web portal at yangming.com.

Yang Ming container prefixes

Every intermodal container carries an ISO 6346 owner code — three letters identifying the owner, plus a single category letter (almost always U for freight containers). These four-letter prefixes are the fastest way to identify which carrier controls a given box. Yang Ming has the following registered prefixes recorded in the BIC database. If a container in your possession begins with any of these codes, the box is owned by or leased on long term to Yang Ming.

To track a container under one of these prefixes, contact the carrier directly using the bill-of-lading number or container number. Most ocean carriers expose a public tracking endpoint on their website that accepts either format. Yang Ming publishes its tracking page under the main yangming.com domain.

Yang Ming sample transit times

Indicative point-to-point transit times for services on which Yang Ming appears in rotation. Actual ETAs vary with vessel rotation, port congestion, weather and trans-shipment patterns. We update these figures every quarter against published carrier schedules.

OriginDestinationTransitFrequencyCorridor
Shanghai, China Rotterdam, Netherlands 32 days Daily sailings via 7 services Asia-Europe
Qingdao, China Antwerp, Belgium 36 days Weekly Asia-Europe
Ningbo, China Genoa, Italy 30 days Weekly Asia-Mediterranean
Shanghai, China Los Angeles, USA 14 days Daily sailings Transpacific

See all 8 corridors served by Yang Ming →

How to track a Yang Ming container

Tracking a Yang Ming container starts with confirming the prefix. Look at the container's left-hand corner casting plate or the painted code on the door — the four-letter ISO 6346 owner code (e.g. YMLU) is followed by six numeric digits and a single check digit. If the prefix matches one in the list above, the box is on a Yang Ming bill of lading. Visit yangming.com, navigate to the carrier's tracking or "track and trace" portal, and paste the full container number. The portal will return current vessel position, the next scheduled port call, the estimated time of arrival (ETA) and the most recent equipment events such as gate-in, loaded, discharged and gate-out.

If the carrier portal does not return a result, the most likely causes are: the container has not yet been gate-in at the origin terminal, the bill of lading number is in a different format (check whether the system expects an MBL versus an HBL), or the box is moving on a partner alliance vessel rather than a Yang Ming hull. In the last case, the prefix still resolves to Yang Ming as equipment owner but the schedule data lives with the operating carrier. Yang Ming's customer service can normally cross-reference the booking and route you to the correct alliance partner. Reach the carrier on +886 2 2455 5151 during European business hours.

Related ocean carriers

Operators most often compared with Yang Ming on overlapping trade lanes: