About time in transit (TNT) estimations

Several Shipium products utilize a time in transit (TNT) calculation as part of estimating how long a shipment will take to be delivered to a customer, starting from the point at which it is shipped from a facility. This is a critical component of how we provide an estimated delivery date, or EDD. Delivery Promise, Fulfillment Engine, and Carrier Selection all incorporate usage of the TNT calculation.

Shipium offers three options for calculating TNTs in order to suit your organization’s business needs best:

Shipium calculated (recommended). Shipium uses proprietary machine learning (ML) models on top of our large pool of shipment data to provide our best delivery date estimate.
Partner (customer) overrides. Your organization may have business reasons to choose your own provided TNT values for some of your shipping lanes, rather than utilizing Shipium’s calculated values.
Carrier defaults. You can choose to use TNT values provided by your organization’s carriers, such as UPS or USPS.

How Shipium applies TNTs to estimations

Shipium calculated TNTs (recommended)

Shipium’s ML models analyze historical data to learn relationships between predictor variables (i.e., input features) and a target variable (i.e., label). Our models are designed to predict time in transit by using historical data and capturing a wide range of variability, which may be driven by carrier, service level, temporal, and packaging type factors. Our ML models' unique ability to learn patterns from these combined features ensures that predictions are tailored to the specific context of each shipment, rather than relying solely on general zip-to-zip estimates, helping your organization choose the best carrier service level based on your desired delivery needs, optimizing for speed, cost, or other priorities.

Our TNT settings – very conservative, conservative, standard, and aggressive – are powered by these ML models, using an advanced, dynamic method for further enabling you to select delivery estimates that align with your specific business needs and priorities:

Low risk of late deliveries. If your organization prioritizes on-time delivery promises, you can utilize the conservative or very conservative setting to minimize the risk of late deliveries, with a reduced likelihood of downgraded shipments relative to the standard setting.
Cost-effective shipping. If you are focused on optimizing shipping costs and are less concerned with late deliveries, the aggressive setting will offer aggressive delivery timelines.
Balanced approach. If your organization prefers a balance between delivery reliability and cost-effectiveness, you can rely on the standard setting to achieve your goals.
Precise delivery timing. In scenarios where precise delivery timing is crucial, you can specify exact date delivery. In scenarios where precise delivery timing is critical, we enable exact date delivery for qualifying shipments. These commitments are backed by confidence measures designed to ensure high reliability, so you can deliver on customer expectations with a higher degree of certainty.

You can find information about configuring these values for desired and exact delivery date settings via calls to Shipium's APIs in the Desired, Exact, & Guaranteed Delivery Dates documentation.

How Shipium calculated TNT settings work

Shipium's ML model analyzes historical delivery data to learn a range of potential delivery times for each shipment. For any given route and set of conditions (carrier, service level, package characteristics, day of week, seasonality), the model identifies:

The fastest delivery time observed in similar historical shipments
The most common delivery time
The longest delivery time observed in similar historical shipments

Your chosen TNT setting determines which point in this learned range Shipium selects for your delivery prediction:

Aggressive. Selects predictions closer to the fastest historical delivery times
Standard. Selects balanced, middle-range estimates
Conservative. Selects predictions closer to the longest historical delivery times
Very conservative. Selects the most conservative predictions available

Example: Consider a shipment between two specific ZIP codes using a particular carrier service. Historical data shows this route typically delivers in 2 days, but when the ML model factors in variables like day of week and package weight, it observes:

Fastest historical time: 1 day
Most common time: 2 days
Longest historical time: 3 days

An aggressive setting would predict closer to 1 day, standard would predict closer to 2 days, and conservative would predict closer to 3 days.

Understanding TNT settings and carrier method selection

A common question is whether conservative TNT settings automatically upgrade shipments to expedited carrier methods. The TNT setting does not directly force method upgrades. However, there is an indirect relationship.

When using a conservative or very conservative setting, predicted transit times are longer (closer to historical maximums for each route). If your desired delivery date remains the same, this longer prediction means:

Fewer ground or economy methods will meet the delivery window.
Expedited methods are more likely to be selected to meet your target delivery date.

This is not an automatic upgrade — it's the logical result of working backward from your delivery date with a more conservative transit time prediction. Conversely, aggressive settings with shorter predicted transit times naturally result in more ground methods meeting delivery windows, potentially reducing shipping costs.

Partner (customer) override TNTs

Partner override TNTs are custom transit time values that you can define and have uploaded to the Shipium Console, allowing them to override the system's default transit times for specific shipping routes. These overrides work by enabling you to define details such as carrier service method, origin/destination country and postal codes, and the desired whole integer transit days in a TNT template that you'll provide to your Shipium representative. Shipium’s platform prioritizes these TNTs, with more granular postal code overrides (e.g., zip 5) taking precedence over less granular ones (e.g., zonal). These TNTs are calculated based on your organization’s historical shipment data. Your Shipium team member can help you manage your TNTs.

Carrier default TNTs

Carrier default TNTs are calculated based on carrier-defined standard transit times for specific carriers and their service methods for each route. The level of granularity and transit times are set by the carriers and loaded into the Shipium platform. If corrections need to be made to carrier default TNTs, you will need to work with your carrier representative. Your Shipium team member can assist you.

Hierarchy of TNTs

Shipium recommends a hierarchy that selects the Shipium calculated TNT values, when no business rules specific to your organization's shipping lanes need to be considered. Thus, you would configure your TNT hierarchy as follows:

Shipium calculated TNTs
Partner (customer) override TNTs
Carrier default TNTs

However, your organization may need to prioritize internal business rules to be applied to TNT calculations. In this case, Shipium suggests structuring your TNT calculation hierarchy with your partner (customer) overrides being considered before any Shipium calculated values:

Partner (customer) override TNTs
Shipium calculated TNTs
Carrier default TNTs

If you have questions about your TNT configuration or wish to make adjustments, please reach out to your Shipium Implementation or Customer Success team member.

Examples

The following examples illustrate how the TNT is determined based on the configured TNT hierarchy and the impact of different Shipium calculated TNT settings.

Example A

Shipment A from New York City to Seattle is evaluated. The shipment enters the hierarchy, and with the standard Shipium calculated setting, the value of ‘4 Days’ is selected:

Partner override: ‘NULL’ (Your organization did not enter any optional partner overrides.)
Shipium calculated (standard setting): ‘4 Days’
Carrier default: ‘6 Days’

Example B

Shipment B from Austin to Portland is evaluated. The shipment enters the hierarchy, selecting the partner override value of ‘8 Days’:

Partner override: ‘8 Days’ (Your organization provided a partner override.)
Shipium calculated (standard setting): ‘4 Days’
Carrier default: ‘5 Days’

Example C

Shipment C from Chicago to Dallas is evaluated. The shipment enters the hierarchy, and with the aggressive Shipium calculated setting, the value of ‘3 Days’ is selected:

Partner override: ‘NULL’ (Your organization did not enter any optional partner overrides.)
Shipium calculated (aggressive setting): ‘3 Days’
Carrier default: ‘4 Days’

Example D

Shipment D from Los Angeles to Denver is evaluated. The shipment enters the hierarchy, and with the conservative Shipium calculated setting, the value of ‘5 Days’ is selected:

Partner override: ‘NULL’ (Your organization did not enter any optional partner overrides.)
Shipium calculated (conservative setting): ‘5 Days’
Carrier default: ‘4 Days’

Resources

Your Shipium team member is available to help along the way. However, you might find these resources helpful:

FAQ

Q: How do the Shipium calculated TNT settings actually work?
A: Shipium's ML model predicts a range of possible delivery times based on historical data from similar shipments. Your TNT setting determines where in that range your prediction is selected from. Aggressive selects predictions closer to the fastest historical times, standard provides balanced estimates, and conservative selects predictions closer to the longest historical times. The model dynamically considers factors like carrier, route, package characteristics, and seasonality to generate these predictions.

Q: Does a conservative setting automatically upgrade my shipments to expedited methods?
A: No, the TNT setting does not directly control carrier method selection. However, conservative settings predict longer transit times, which means fewer ground methods will meet your desired delivery date. This naturally results in expedited methods being selected more frequently. It's not an automatic upgrade—it's the logical outcome of requiring more transit time to meet your delivery window.

Q: Can I use different TNT settings for domestic and international shipments?
A: Not at this time. Flexible TNT settings (aggressive, standard, conservative, very conservative) apply only to US domestic shipments. Non-US shipments, including those to/from Canada, automatically use more conservative predictions to ensure reliability with less available historical data.