Төңкергіш контейнерлерді кодтау, идентификациялау және таңбалау стандарты ISO 6346

International standard covering the coding, identification and marking of shipping containers

ISO 6346 is an international standard covering the coding, identification and marking of intermodal (shipping) containers used within containerized intermodal freight transport by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The standard establishes a visual identification system for every container that includes a unique serial number (with check digit), the owner, a country code, a size, type and equipment category as well as any operational marks. The register of container owners is managed by the International Container Bureau (BIC).

The owner code consists of three capital letters of the Latin alphabet to indicate the owner or principal operator of the container. Such code needs to be registered at the Bureau International des Containers in Paris to ensure uniqueness worldwide. An owner can apply for more than one code, as normally the first 2 letters are used as the owner code and the third is used to indicate pool (e. g. HLA, HLB, HLX are some Hapag Lloyd codes to indicate whether container is standard, reefer )

The serial number consists of 6 numeric digits, assigned by the owner or operator, uniquely identifying the container within that owner/operator's fleet.

The check digit consists of one numeric digit providing a means of validating the recording and transmission accuracy of the owner code and serial number. To compute the check digit, the letters have to be converted to numbers. This is done in three steps:

If the final difference is 10, then the check digit becomes 0. To ensure that this does not happen the standard recommends that serial numbers should not be used which produce a final difference of 10; however, there are containers in the market which do not follow this recommendation, so handling this case has to be included if a check digit calculator is programmed. Notice that step (ii) to (v) is a calculation of the remainder found after division of (i) by 11. Most programming languages have a modulo operator for this. Attention should be paid to how it works in the language chosen; i. e. if it gives back the decimal rest or the integer rest in order to get proper results. 11 is used as divisor because a container number has 11 letters and digits in total. In step 1 the numbers 11, 22 and 33 are left out as they are multiples of the divisor.

C S Q U 3 0 5 4 3 8 Calc. 13 30 28 32 3 0 5 4 3 8 × 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 13 60 112 256 48 0 320 512 768 4096 6185 [a] b) Division by 11: 562.272 c) Erase decimal digits: 562 d) Multiply by 11: 6182 a) minus d) = Check Digit: 3

In day to day business it happens that containers do appear which do not follow the ISO 6346 identification at all; however, they are fully CSC safety approved containers. Usually these are "shippers owned" containers (SOC), which means that they are not owned by the carrier but supplied by the cargo owners (shippers). They may have no registered owner code and no category identifier and have no check digit. It is advisable to follow ISO 6346 as the absence of a compliant identification code causes problems for both carriers and container terminals to correctly identify the equipment and properly deliver the cargo, because computer systems require ISO 6346 conforming naming and as such missing prefixes are invented. For example, YYYY at the carrier and XXXX at the terminal causes the equipment to mismatch. Moreover, since ISO 6346 identification has become a requirement in international Customs conventions (Customs Conventions on Containers and Istanbul Convention), many Customs Administrations have begun validating that containers are marked as per the standard.

The country code consists of two capital letters of the Latin alphabet as described in ISO 3166 1. It indicates the country where the code is registered not the nationality of the owner or operator of the container. The letters of the code shall not be less than high.