The ship broker other brokers learn the tools from
$92,670top of the range in Utah · middle $52,260 / yr
AI augments this role
Ship Brokers in the United States earn a median of $52,260 a year. Pay starts near $38,340. Pay reaches $92,670 at the top of the range in Utah, the best-paying state for this work among those with at least 500 people in the job.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Cargo and Freight Agents, SOC 43-5011). Last checked 9 September 2026.
Entry level
$38,340
Top of the range · Utah
$92,670
Education
Bachelor's degree in Maritime or Business
Wages — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Cargo and Freight Agents). Top of the range is the highest state-level figure among states with at least 500 people in the job. AI-impact rating is PayCrunch's editorial assessment. Updated September 2026.
🆕 New & Trending AI Tools for Ship BrokerReviewed September 2026
We track new AI-tool launches every week and refresh this list — here’s what’s gaining traction for Ship Broker work right now.
Numeo AINEWPaid / see site
AI dispatch platform that matches loads and plans routes for trucking.
How a Ship Broker uses it: let AI find better loads and build the most efficient route/schedule
DAT iQNEWPaid / see site
Freight market intelligence with AI rate forecasting and lane analytics.
How a Ship Broker uses it: price a load right and pick profitable lanes with live market data
NetradyneNEWFleet / see site
AI-powered dashcam that coaches driving and rewards safe behavior.
How a Ship Broker uses it: get instant in-cab coaching and build a safety record that protects your CDL
NotebookLMNEWFree / $7.99 mo
Google tool that answers questions grounded only in the documents you give it — with citations.
How a Ship Broker uses it: load your own manuals, policies, or PDFs and ask questions that stay accurate to the source
Motive~$89/vehicle mo
Driver app with AI safety alerts, fuel and route insights (formerly KeepTruckin).
How a Ship Broker uses it: get real-time safety and fuel coaching and cut idle time on the road
Samsara~$99/vehicle mo
Connected-fleet platform with AI dash cams, routing, and maintenance alerts.
How a Ship Broker uses it: use AI dashcam coaching and predictive maintenance to stay safe and avoid breakdowns
Route4MePaid / see site
Route optimization that sequences multi-stop trips across 200+ variables.
How a Ship Broker uses it: turn a list of stops into the fastest, fuel-smart route in seconds
ChatGPTFree / $20 mo
The most-used AI assistant — writing, analysis, research, and images from a plain-language chat.
How a Ship Broker uses it: draft emails and documents, summarize long files, and get instant answers to on-the-job questions
ClaudeFree / $20 mo
AI assistant known for careful writing, long-document analysis, and coding.
How a Ship Broker uses it: analyze big reports or spreadsheets and turn messy notes into clean, finished writing
A cargo still looking for a hull
A ship broker lives in the gap between a cargo that needs to move and a ship that can take it. The cargo may be grain, fuel, containers, or a project piece that will not fit a normal box. The ship may be open next week in a nearby port or already fixed and looking for a return. The broker's morning is a stack of inquiries, a list of vessel positions, and a phone that does not stay quiet. Nothing is manufactured. The product is a match, and then a deal both sides will sign.
People outside the port think this is generic sales. It is commercial work with a narrow subject. You have to know which ships can carry which cargoes, which ports can take them, and which dates still have room. You also have to know who is allowed to speak for the owner and who is allowed to speak for the charterer. A junior who mixes those voices creates a mess a senior broker has to unwind. The job rewards a clear head and a written recap more than a loud pitch.
The desk can sit in a port city or far inland. What matters is the book of clients and the information, not the view of the water. Some brokers work exclusive mandates for owners. Some work cargo for charterers. Some shops do both and keep the two roles from colliding. On your first week you will mostly listen, file, and learn the names. The names are the business.
Morning on a fixture desk
A fixture is the deal: a ship committed to a cargo on commercial terms. Before that word is used, the desk is sorting. An inquiry names a cargo, a load port, a discharge port, and a window of dates. The broker looks for ships that can physically take the cargo and that are free in time to make the load. Offers go out. Counters come back. A recap records what was agreed so nobody "remembers" a different freight later. After the fixture, the same desk or a colleague follows documents, agents, and the small changes that always arrive before the ship sails.
The tone is fast and written. Messages are short because both sides are talking to several brokers at once. You learn to state the cargo, the ship, the dates, and the price idea without decorating them. You learn which details belong in the recap and which details are still open. A missed exclusion or a wrong port name costs money and a relationship. Seniors will let a junior draft the recap long before they let the junior speak alone to a principal.
Relationships are the other half of the day. Owners want brokers who bring real cargo, not noise. Charterers want brokers who bring ships that will actually perform. You keep both sides informed without giving away the other side's private number. That judgment is the skill. It is learned by sitting next to someone who has already lost a client by talking too much, and who will tell you the story so you do not repeat it.
Matching cargo to ships
The core of the job is the match. A cargo has a quantity, a stowage character, and a pair of ports. A ship has a size, a recent position, and a next commitment. The broker lines those facts up and says whether a conversation is worth starting. Some matches die in five messages because the dates never overlap. Some become a fixture that occupies the desk for days. You are paid, in the long run, for the ones that become fixtures and for the trust that brings the next inquiry to you first.
Market talk is constant and easy to abuse. Rates move. A junior's job is to report what was actually offered, not what a chat room claims. Keep a log of fixtures you touched: cargo type, route, and whether the deal closed. That log becomes your proof in a pay review. It also becomes your education. After a year you can see which cargoes your shop really handles and which ones you should stop pretending to cover.
Ethics are practical here. Do not represent both sides of the same fixture unless the shop's rules and both clients allow it in writing. Do not invent a ship. Do not hide a conflict. The industry is small enough that a false position gets repeated back to you by someone who was on the other phone. A reputation for accurate matches is the only asset that survives a slow freight year.
Chartered shipbroker membership
The United States does not issue a government licence that you must hold before you can broker a ship. The credential people in the trade recognize is membership in the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers. The institute grants it. Members have completed the institute's qualifying route and been admitted to membership. What it proves is that you have studied the commercial practice of shipbroking, including how cargo is matched to ships and how fixtures are formed, at a level the institute is willing to stand behind. The homepage is ics.org.uk.
People prepare by working in a brokerage and studying the institute's syllabus beside the job. The desk teaches you the live market. The study route teaches the structure that the live market assumes you know: parties, documents, and the commercial ideas that show up in every recap. You do not need the membership to be hired as a trainee. You do need it, or clear progress toward it, when you want a title that clients outside your own city will recognize. Put "studying toward membership" on the resume only if it is true.
In the United States, many desks also stay close to the Association of Ship Brokers and Agents. That association is a professional home, not a substitute for the institute's membership. Use it to meet people and to learn how agency work sits next to chartering. When you list credentials, separate them. Membership in the institute is the qualifying credential. Association activity is a network. Hiring managers in this trade know the difference, and they notice when a resume blurs it.
How a brokerage takes on a junior
Brokers hire juniors who can write a clean message, keep a secret, and learn a market without performing. A degree in logistics, maritime studies, or business helps some shops and is ignored by others. What helps everywhere is proof you understand a fixture at a basic level: who the owner is, who the charterer is, and what it means to match a cargo to a ship. An internship or a clerical start in a port agency is a respected door. So is a year in operations at a shipowner, if you can explain the commercial side rather than only the paperwork you filed.
The application should be short. Name the sector you want: dry cargo, tankers, containers, or projects. Name any port or trade lane you actually know. Offer a writing sample that is a recap or a market note with the private names removed, if a previous employer allows it. If you have no sample, write a short note on how you would sort three fictional inquiries. Skip slogans. A broker reading applications is already behind on live cargo.
Interviews are conversations about judgment. You may be given a cargo and two ships and asked which conversation you would open first, and why. Talk about dates, ports, and fit. Admit what you would have to check. The wrong answer is a confident invention. The right answer is a clear order of facts and a short list of what is still unknown. Shops would rather train a careful person than untrain a reckless one.
From support work to a book of clients
The early title is often trainee, assistant, or post-fixture support. You check documents, update positions, and draft recaps a senior will send. Then you start covering a lane while the senior is on another call. Then a small client is yours to keep informed. The leap to broker is the leap to a book: people who call you first. Commission structures vary by shop, and you should ask how an assistant's salary relates to a broker's commission before you assume the second year pays for the first year's long nights.
Later paths split. Some brokers stay on the desk and become the person a whole trade calls. Some move in-house to a charterer or an owner, buying or selling freight for one principal instead of brokering for many. Some move into operations or into agency management. The membership and the fixture log travel with you. A book of clients does not always travel, because clients may belong to the shop. Know which is which before you resign. Ask, in writing, what you may take and what stays.
A slow market is part of the career, not a surprise. Fixtures thin out, and shops cut juniors who never became useful on the phone. The protection is range: more than one cargo type, clean writing, and a credential you kept studying for while the market was loud. When hiring returns, the person with a finished membership and a honest log of deals is easier to place than the person who only has stories about a busy year.
The freight-agent series, cited once
Pay figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for Cargo and Freight Agents. That series is broader than a ship broker's desk, and this is the one place to name it. Entry is $38,340. The national median is $52,260. The high end of the published range is $92,670 in Utah. The step from entry to the national median is $13,920. The step from the national median to the Utah high end is $40,410. The national median sits $8,500 below the highest state median.
State medians are a different statistic from that high end. Washington has the highest median at $60,760. New Jersey is $60,210. New York is $60,040. Illinois is $59,750. Massachusetts is $58,680. The lowest median in the release is Hawaii at $42,400. The gap between Washington and Hawaii is $18,360. The high end differs from the state median. Utah's $92,670 is the high end of the published range. Washington's $60,760 is a median. They do not describe the same thing, and they do not even describe the same state.
Do not swap Utah and Washington
The high end is not the state median. If a shop in Washington quotes $92,670 as the local typical wage, it is borrowing Utah's high end. The Washington figure to use for a typical wage is the median, $60,760.
A pay talk with a thin book or a full one
Locate the offer before you talk about commission. Near $38,340, you are at entry, and the national median is $13,920 higher. Ask what salary you earn while the book is still the senior's, and when a review happens. Near $52,260, you match the national middle. In Washington, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, or Massachusetts, the state median is higher, though not by a dramatic amount. Washington's median is only $8,500 above the national median. That is real money. The larger spread in this release sits elsewhere, between the national median and the high end.
The big jump is from the national median to the high end: $40,410, up to $92,670 in Utah. Treat that high end as the top of the published range, not as a first-year target and not as Washington's median. Bring it into the conversation when you have a book, a lane you cover alone, or a commission plan that should pay above a salary median. Ask the shop to show how salary and commission interact. A high commission rate with a salary far under $38,340 can be a worse deal than a plain salary near the state median, if the fixtures are not yours to count.
If you are comparing cities, use medians. Hawaii at $42,400 and Washington at $60,760 differ by $18,360. New York at $60,040 is close to Washington. Do not let a recruiter call that cluster the same thing as Utah's high end. For a move, write three numbers on one line: the offer, the state median if you have it, and the national median. For a promotion from assistant to broker, write the entry, the median, and the commission rule. Leave the meeting with those figures attached to a title. A handshake about upside still needs a dollar figure beside it.
Keep the institute progress in the same conversation. A shop that wants chartered membership should say whether it pays for the study route and whether finishing it moves you toward the median or beyond it. If the shop will not connect the credential to a dollar figure, you still learn something. You can pursue the membership for your own book of proof, and you can judge the salary against $52,260 without waiting for anyone to call it fair. The release is public. Your recap log is private. Together they are enough for a serious talk.
The top of Ship Broker pay — and how to get there with AI
$92,670what Ship Broker pay reaches in Utah
Highest state-level top-of-range annual wage for Cargo and Freight Agents, among states with at least 500 people in the job. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
And the role it leads to — Postal Service Clerks — reaches $76,360 in California.
$38,340entry$52,260middle$92,670top end
The distance between a middling ship broker and one at the top of this range is usually not the fixture; it is whether the desk around them works from a shared method or from fourteen private habits.
Negotiating and arranging transport with shipping and freight companies, estimating rates, preparing bills of lading and invoices, tracing shipments that have gone quiet and advising clients on transport and payment methods are all done well by experienced brokers and almost never written down. So when brokerage software or order management software lands, it gets used at a tenth of its depth and everybody drifts back to a private spreadsheet. A broker who learns one system properly, rebuilds the office's templates inside it, and then trains the room becomes the reason a desk can carry more cargo without hiring, which is a much easier case to make than a good month.
Your playbook, by where you are now
Just startingGet your own desk repeatable first
Keep one file per cargo holding the quote, the fixture terms, the documents and every message, so nothing lives only in your inbox.
Write the recap the same way every time, with the terms that cause arguments listed first.
Learn to estimate freight rates from your own past cargoes in Microsoft Excel instead of from whatever figure is circulating.
Trace your own delayed or missing shipments to a stated cause and record it, rather than passing them along.
Check packaging and labelling on export cargo yourself and know what the filing through AESDirect will reject before it does.
What proves it: A year of cargoes where quote, fixture, documents and outcome all sit in one place.
Realistic span: the first eighteen months
A few years inRebuild the office templates inside one system
Take the brokerage software the office already pays for and move your entire book into it, including the awkward accounts.
Rebuild the bill of lading and invoice templates so a missing field stops the document rather than reaching a client.
Set up shared notes in Microsoft OneNote for each trade and port, covering documentation quirks, holidays and the people who answer.
Have Gemini draft the routine arrival notices to consignees and the standard payment-terms explanation, then verify every reference and figure before sending.
Time yourself on a full cargo the old way and the new way, and write the comparison down.
What proves it: An office template set inside one system, with your timing comparison behind it.
Realistic span: years two through six
ExperiencedTrain the room and own the method
Run short weekly sessions for the desk on the system, using live cargoes rather than a demonstration file.
Write the onboarding pack a new broker reads in week one, covering rate estimation, documentation and what to do when a shipment goes quiet.
Set the rule for which method of shipment gets recommended when, so client advice stops depending on who picked up the phone.
Take one trade or commodity and know its seasons, its charterers and its documentation better than the clients do.
Consider where the work pays best; Utah sits unusually high for this occupation, and the office that trains on your pack tends to be the office that promotes from it.
What proves it: A desk running on documentation you wrote, and new brokers trained against it.
Realistic span: from year seven
The next 90 days
Choose the system your office bought and only half uses, and give it one quarter of real commitment. Move every cargo you touch into it, not the tidy ones only, and rebuild the two documents you produce most, the bill of lading and the invoice, so that a blank required field stops them cold. Keep a note of the minutes each cargo takes from first enquiry to documents out, both before and after. At the end of three months you will have two things nobody else on the desk has: a working template set and a timing comparison that says what it saved. Take both to whoever runs the office, then offer to spend an hour a week teaching it. Brokers who train the room stop being measured on their own book alone.
Wage figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. The playbook is PayCrunch editorial guidance, not a guarantee of pay or placement.
Every figure is the national median from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS) shown on that role’s own page.
Never used AI before? Start here (2 minutes).
Open a maritime intelligence platform and let it watch the market for you.Kpler and Signal Ocean track vessel positions, ballasters, tonnage lists, and freight rates with AI analytics — set alerts for your trade so you see the open ship or the fresh cargo first. Pair them with the Baltic Exchange indices for the benchmark rate on every route you cover, and MarineTraffic for live AIS positions.
For drafting and reading the market, use ChatGPT or Claude to turn a messy tonnage list into a clean position report, draft a fixture recap, or condense the day's market news from Perplexity — but keep confidential principal and counterparty details out of public tools, and verify every number against the exchange before you quote it.
The one rule, forever: You sit on market-moving, confidential information — never leak a principal's position, cargo, or rate to another party, and never paste confidential fixture details into public AI tools. Verify every rate, quantity, and vessel detail AI gives you against the Baltic indices and primary sources before you quote; an AI-hallucinated number in a firm offer is your liability. Screen every counterparty and vessel for sanctions (OFAC, EU, UK, UN) and confirm charter-party terms against the correct BIMCO form — those are legal obligations, not optional.
The plays — exact steps, exact prompts
Do these in order. Each one is copy-paste ready. You do not need to know anything about AI going in.
1
Build a real-time market picture — positions, cargoes, rates
Why this pays: The broker with the best live view of open tonnage and available cargo fixes deals others never see. More and better-timed fixtures is the whole game, and it is directly more commission.
KplerSignal OceanMarineTraffic
1
In Kpler or Signal Ocean, set AIS and market alerts for your exact trade so you're notified the moment a suitable vessel ballasts into your area or a rate moves.
2
Turn a raw tonnage list into a usable position report and matches.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a dry-bulk [Supramax] market analyst. From this list of vessel names, open dates, and open ports I'll paste — [tonnage list] — produce a clean position report grouped by region and sorted by open date, and flag which ships are best placed for a cargo of [grain, ECSA to Med, laycan X]. Then summarize what today's [BSI] movement implies for rate direction.
Use only tonnage and position data you're permitted to share, and keep principals' confidential cargoes out. Confirm rate direction against the Baltic index, not the model's guess.
What you'll haveA live, organized market picture that surfaces the right ship for the right cargo first — the timing edge that wins fixtures.
2
Price the fixture right with rate and voyage economics
Why this pays: Quoting the right rate and time-charter equivalent wins the business and protects your credibility. A broker who nails the number gets the repeat orders that build a book — and a book is what pays $92,670.
Baltic ExchangeVeson NauticalChatGPT
1
Pull the benchmark route rate from the Baltic Exchange and run the voyage economics in Veson Nautical (or a spreadsheet) — bunkers, port costs, canal, laytime — before you talk numbers.
2
Sanity-check a voyage estimate step by step.
Copy-paste this prompt
Help me sanity-check a voyage estimate for a [Supramax, 56,000 dwt] carrying [grain] from [Santos] to [Iskenderun], laycan [dates]. Given freight of [$X/mt], bunker price [$Y/mt VLSFO], estimated [bunker consumption], port costs [$Z], and [days], walk through the time-charter-equivalent calculation step by step and tell me whether the freight looks strong or weak versus a benchmark daily hire of [$H]. Show the math.
Verify bunker prices, port costs, and the benchmark against live sources before quoting — a firm offer built on a wrong number is on you. AI does the arithmetic, not the market call.
What you'll haveConfident, defensible rate quotes that win business and earn repeat orders — the foundation of a commission-earning book.
3
Draft recaps, offers, and correspondence at speed
Why this pays: Broking is a volume-of-communication game. Drafting clean recaps, firm offers, and market circulars fast means you work more orders at once and look sharper to principals — more throughput, more fixtures.
ChatGPTMicrosoft CopilotGrammarly
1
Build reusable templates for offers, counters, and recaps, and use Copilot or ChatGPT to polish circulars and correspondence to a professional standard fast.
2
Turn agreed main terms into a clean recap.
Copy-paste this prompt
Turn these agreed main terms into a clean, professional fixture recap in standard broker format: [vessel, cargo, quantity plus tolerance, load and discharge ports, laycan, freight or hire, demurrage, commission, charter-party form e.g. GENCON, special clauses]. Use conventional shipping abbreviations, keep it unambiguous, and list any main term still missing that we must confirm before it's clean.
A recap is contractually significant — you draft, but the parties and their lawyers confirm. Verify every term against what was actually agreed, and never auto-send.
What you'll haveFaster, cleaner recaps and offers — so you carry more live orders at once without dropping the detail that closes them.
4
Screen sanctions, KYC, and counterparties fast
Why this pays: One sanctions breach or a bad-credit charterer can destroy a broker's reputation and expose you to liability. Fast, thorough screening lets you deal confidently and keeps principals coming back — reputation is the asset that compounds into pay at the top of the range.
WindwardKplerLloyd's List Intelligence
1
Screen the vessel, owner, and charterer for sanctions and dark-fleet indicators in Windward or Kpler — AIS gaps, suspicious ship-to-ship transfers, flag-hopping, opaque ownership — before you fix.
2
Build a due-diligence checklist and red-flag review.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a maritime sanctions-compliance analyst. Give me a due-diligence checklist to screen a new [charterer or owner] and the nominated vessel before fixing: which sanctions lists to check (OFAC, EU, UK, UN), the vessel red flags to look for (AIS gaps, STS off [region], flag changes, ownership opacity), and the documents to request. Then list the questions to raise with my compliance officer for a cargo touching [a sensitive trade].
AI builds the checklist; a licensed compliance or legal team makes the call. Screen against official sanctions sources — never rely on AI's memory of who is listed.
What you'll haveClean, documented diligence on every deal — protecting your reputation and letting you fix with confidence.
5
Grow the book with market research and relationship intelligence
Why this pays: Brokers earn by covering a market deeply and being first with useful intelligence for principals. Sharper research and outreach expand the client book that drives commission — the direct engine behind the $92,670 tier.
PerplexityClaudeClarksons Research
1
Run a daily commodity and route scan with Perplexity and Clarksons Research to bring principals something useful, and use it to spot new cargo flows and charterers to target.
2
Draft a weekly market note for your clients.
Copy-paste this prompt
Write a concise weekly market note I can send to my [Supramax Atlantic] principals: summarize this week's rate movement on [key routes], the main drivers (weather, [grain] season, port congestion, bunker prices), and one forward-looking view. Keep it to 200 words, sharp, and non-confidential, based only on the public data points I paste here: [data].
Feed it only public data — never a principal's confidential position. Fact-check every figure; your credibility is your book.
What you'll haveA steady flow of valuable intelligence to principals that deepens relationships and wins new orders — the growing book that pays.
Your 12-month sequence to the top of the range
How the plays above stack into a path from median pay toward the $92,670 tier.
Month 1
Set up AIS and rate alerts in Kpler or Signal Ocean for your exact trade, and benchmark every route against the Baltic index daily.
Months 2-3
Standardize recap and offer templates and a voyage-calculation workflow so you quote faster and cleaner than the desk next door.
Months 3-6
Build a sanctions and KYC checklist into every deal, and start sending a weekly market note to grow relationships.
Months 6-12
Use the reclaimed time and sharper intelligence to cover more of the market and take on bigger and more frequent fixtures — the commission that reaches $92,670.
Gear for this job
As an Amazon Associate, PayCrunch earns from qualifying purchases. Links to books and tools are for the job on this page; we only recommend what we’d use in the work.
Same live Jossey-Bass 3rd already on high-school-teacher / middle-school-teacher / math-teacher / test-prep-instructor / substitute-teacher / science-teacher / music-teacher / drama-teacher / adult-education-teacher / corporate-trainer / instructional-designer / stem-teacher / pe-teacher / speech-teacher / curriculum-developer / education-consultant / college-professor / assistant-principal / financial-literacy-educator / school-principal / vice-principal / homeschool-consultant / school-administrator / edtech-specialist / education-administrator / distance-learning-coordinator / capitol-police-officer / tsa-agent / piano-tuner / birth-doula / dive-master / translator / voice-over-director / wordpress-developer / balloon-artist / circus-performer / nutritionist / academic-advisor / dermatologist / train-conductor / calligrapher / choreographer / motivational-speaker / marble-polisher / compensation-analyst / fleet-manager (ASIN 1119712610). This leftover page is BLS Cargo and Freight Agents (SOC 43-5011); title is Teach the Desk the New System; H1 is The ship broker other brokers learn the tools from; experienced track is Train the room and own the method; the playbook centers running short weekly sessions for the desk on the system using live cargoes, writing the onboarding pack a new broker reads in week one, and offering teaching so brokers who train the room stop being measured on their own book alone; start-here is Open a maritime intelligence platform and let it watch the market for you; one-rule is Never leak a principal's position, cargo, or rate, and never paste confidential fixture details into public AI tools. Classroom technique for leftover desk / onboarding-pack / instructional work — not leftover Wong as the lead (that is spa-manager / admissions-director) and not leftover Praxis as a dump. Confirm 1119712610. Live page HTTP 200, no PC_GEAR / amazon.com/dp / tag=paycrunch-20 at 2026-09-18 4:37 AM PT. Source page: corporate-trainer.
Next steps for a Ship Broker
Some links below are affiliate or partner links. PayCrunch may earn a commission if you enroll or subscribe through them, at no extra cost to you. Wage figures on this page still come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not from these programs.
Ship Broker work is specific enough that a stamped 'check out these courses' block would be noise. BLS files this work as Cargo and Freight Agents (SOC 43-5011). O*NET Job Zone 2 is typical: a high-school diploma plus short vocational training, so the honest next credential is a short certificate or vocational program — not a random catalog dump.
The occupation's listed knowledge areas include Transportation and Administrative; the links search those subjects, not a generic 'career courses' list.
Ship Brokers in this dataset list SAP software among the tools in use, so a program that names that stack is a better fit than a survey course.
Coursera search for transportation — a short certificate or vocational program that lines up with office, not a generic professional-development aisle.
FlexJobs screens remote, hybrid, freelance, and flexible listings so you are not wading through unverified ads. This is a job-board search for Ship Broker work, not a claim that they list a counted SOC 43-5011 inventory.
Write a Ship Broker resume, or one aimed at Postal Service Clerks, instead of a blank template. Resume Now is a resume builder; we are not claiming a counted template set for this SOC.
A Ship Broker resume that names the actual tasks on this page, or the step-up title Postal Service Clerks, beats a blank template when you apply.
What Ship Brokers earn by state
These are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own figures for Cargo and Freight Agents, state by state — not a cost-of-living adjustment applied to the national number. Only states employing at least 500 people in the occupation are shown, because a state median drawn from a handful of workers is noise rather than a signal.
Washington
$60,760
highest of them · +16% vs the national median
Hawaii
$42,400
lowest of the 32 states that qualify · -19% vs the national median
The same job pays $18,360 more a year at the median in Washington than in Hawaii — 43% higher. That gap is what the Bureau measured, before any question of what it costs to live in either place. The top-of-range figure quoted at the head of this page, $92,670, is a different statistic in a different place: it is the 90th-percentile wage in Utah. The state that pays the typical worker most and the state where the best-paid go highest are not always the same one.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 43-5011. 32 states clear the 500-employee reporting floor for this occupation; those below it are left out rather than shown with a wide error band.
Free data. Use any of it.
PayCrunch publishes verified, BLS-sourced salary + AI-playbook data on 1,000+ professions — free, no signup.
The routine cargo-to-ship matching is being automated by platforms, so pure order-passers are exposed. But AI can't build trust with an owner, negotiate a tricky fixture, or take responsibility for a deal. Brokers who use AI for intelligence and spend the reclaimed time on relationships and judgment will thrive; those who only relay orders are the ones at risk.
Is it safe to put fixture details into ChatGPT?
Not confidential ones. A principal's position and cargo are market-sensitive, and leaking them destroys trust and can breach your duties. Keep confidential details out of public tools and feed AI only data you're permitted to share. General market questions and formatting are fine.
Can I trust AI's freight rates and vessel data?
Only as a starting point. Verify every rate against the Baltic Exchange and every vessel detail against AIS and registry sources before you quote. A wrong number in a firm offer is your liability, so AI does the legwork and arithmetic while you make the market call.
How does AI actually increase my commission?
It gives you a faster, deeper market picture — open ships, available cargoes, rate direction — and cuts drafting time, so you spot and close more fixtures and cover more of the market. More and bigger fixtures at the right rate is exactly how commission climbs toward the top of the range.
What about sanctions — can AI handle compliance?
It can build checklists and flag red flags like AIS gaps and suspicious transfers, but the compliance decision is a licensed human's. Shipping-sanctions enforcement is aggressive and unforgiving; use official sources and your compliance officer, with AI as the fast first-pass net.
Methodology & sources
Salary (median, 10th, top of the range) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS.
By state — the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own state medians, limited to states employing at least 500 people in the occupation. No cost-of-living arithmetic is applied to a wage anywhere on this page.
The plays — PayCrunch's own step-by-step guidance using publicly available AI tools. Tool names/URLs are real and current as of August 2026; prompts written to work as-is. Verify any professional output before relying on it.