Paperwork first. Freight second.
We read the paperwork.
Before a single crate ships, a capital project files paperwork: air permits, federal dockets, grid connections, mine registrations, tenders. FreightOmen reads those public wells continuously — then backs what they say with the one document that cannot lie about freight: the US customs bill of lading filed when cargo actually lands.
The three layers
1 · The signal. Seventeen public wells — state permit registries, federal energy dockets, grid interconnection queues, procurement portals, the federal mine registry, world project news — surface projects months to years before construction. Each becomes a card with its stage on a five-step ladder: signal → announced → FID → EPC → construction.
2 · The receipts. US import bills of lading show what actually shipped: the cargo, the weight, the ocean lane, the date, and the company that filed it. FreightOmen matches those records to projects — and only claims the match when it can prove it.
3 · The omen. Cards see across each other: a forwarder filing for many tracked projects, an ocean lane serving several sites, a new company appearing at a known jobsite address. Patterns a single record could never show.
The honesty system
Every claim on every card carries its evidence level. This is the product's spine — nothing is presented as more certain than it is.
Stated in a linked document. A permit that names the equipment, a customs record proven to this project, a filing with the date on it. Click through to the source, always.
Derived from observed shipments. Real cargo that moved for comparable projects — used to size lanes and equipment, labelled as an analog, never dressed up as this project's paperwork.
Engineering estimate. What a plant of this type typically needs. A starting point to verify before quoting — and the card says exactly that.
What "customs-verified" means
A green checkmark requires the record itself to prove the match — one of four ways:
- The company on the record is the project. The project company appears as consignee on the filing.
- The crate says so. The project's name is written in the shipment's marks & numbers.
- The delivery address is the jobsite. The record's address matches the site.
- The owner exists for this project alone. A single-project company's imports can only be for that project.
Records about an owner's freight generally — real, but not proven to a specific project — are shown separately, in a clearly-marked owner-level section that says NOT CONFIRMED ON THIS PROJECT.
What we never do
- Invent dimensions or weights — blank beats wrong.
- Present an inference as a fact — the label is on every claim.
- Scrape social networks — the signal reaches the public record within hours anyway.
- Show physically impossible data — figures that fail a sanity check are withheld, not displayed.