We traced an IKEA bed shipment from Poland to Philadelphia
A bed in a furniture showroom has a much longer history than its assembly instructions. We picked one public IKEA shipping record to see how much of that history we could reconstruct.
The trail starts with a named Polish shipper and ends at a US port. It does not get us all the way to a customer's bedroom.
One record, one identifiable container
ImportInfo's public sample for IKEA showed bill of lading MEDUYK981783, naming IKEA Industry Poland as shipper. It listed Gdansk as the place of receipt, Antwerp as the foreign loading port and Philadelphia as the unloading port.
The vessel was MSC PANTERA, voyage 640A, and the container number was MSNU9016040. The displayed cargo description identified MALM ottoman-bed goods, with 11 packages, two pallets and a shipment weight of 675 kg. The page reported an actual arrival of 21 October 2026.
Those are fields reproduced by a commercial data publisher. We have not independently obtained the original carrier document or verified the vessel's track.
The useful part of the route
The record distinguishes a place of receipt from a port of loading. That makes it more informative than a simple “Poland to America” label.
It also means we should not draw a straight ship route from Gdansk to Philadelphia. The inland and connecting legs are not established by these fields. The loading port shown is Antwerp, and the record does not give us a complete, timestamped journey between all three places.
The container number is another useful reference, but the bill covers the listed consignment. Eleven packages do not establish the number of complete beds, nor do they show that this consignment filled the container.
Where the trail stops
The consignee entry names IKEA. That does not prove the cargo was delivered to a particular store on a particular day. A listed business address is not a signed delivery receipt, and the manifest does not show a retail sale.
To continue the story, we would need evidence such as a carrier's delivery events, a warehouse receipt or a store receiving record. We do not have those documents for this shipment.
That is still a useful result. A public record can connect a recognizable product family to a shipper, a loading port, a vessel and a US arrival. It usually cannot tell a shopper that the box in front of them is one of the packages on that ship.
How to repeat the exercise
Start with a dated bill of lading, keep its identifier, and write down what each field actually says. Separate reported events from estimates. Check whether the listed party is the manufacturer, an intermediary or a logistics company before describing it as “the factory.”
Our supplier-search walkthrough explains the next steps. If you want to understand the document itself, use the bill of lading guide.
Source checked on 28 October 2026. Public sample records can change. This is a reading of the displayed manifest data, not live tracking or a claim that we followed this container physically.