Tracking Help
What Does 'In Transit' Mean and Why Is My Package Stuck?
Published · 6 min read
“In Transit” simply means the carrier physically has your package and it is moving through their network on the way to the delivery address. It is a healthy, active status — not a warning. The reason it can look “stuck” for a day or two is that scans only happen at specific handoff points (facility arrival, facility departure, aircraft loading, customs release), so between those points nothing new is recorded even though the parcel is still moving.
How the 'In Transit' status actually works
Every parcel journey is a series of scans. When a driver picks the package up, a courier hub sorts it, a truck or plane loads it, and a destination facility unloads it, each step creates one tracking event. Between two scans there is silence — not because the parcel isn't moving, but because nothing is being scanned. Long-haul legs (a truck from Los Angeles to Chicago, or a flight from Shenzhen to Frankfurt) can easily last 24–72 hours with no new update. During that whole window the status stays exactly the same: In Transit.
Common reasons the timeline looks frozen
A silent tracker usually falls into one of five buckets: (1) the parcel is on a long-distance leg between hubs; (2) it just crossed a border and is waiting for a customs release scan; (3) weather, holidays, or backlog have slowed the sorting facility; (4) the carrier did the scan but hasn't synced it to their public tracking yet, which can lag 6–24 hours; or (5) there really is a problem — a missed connection, an address issue, or the package was misrouted. The first four are normal. Only the fifth needs action.
Track it here to see the latest scan
Paste your tracking number into the search box below. ParcelsPulse pulls the freshest events from the carrier, so if a new scan appeared in the last hour you'll see it here even if the shop's page hasn't refreshed yet.
When 'stuck' becomes a real problem
As a rule of thumb, a domestic parcel with no new scan for more than 3 business days, or an international parcel with no new scan for more than 5–7 business days, deserves a follow-up. Start by re-checking the timeline for words like “exception,” “return,” or “held.” If everything looks normal but silent, contact the sender first — they hold the shipping contract and can open a trace faster than the recipient. If you shipped it yourself, contact the carrier directly with the tracking number and pickup date ready.
What you can do while you wait
Keep the tracking page open in a tab and refresh once or twice a day rather than every hour — carriers batch-update most scans overnight. Double-check the delivery address the sender used, because a bad ZIP or missing apartment number is one of the most common causes of a package sitting an extra day at the destination facility. If you're expecting an international order from Temu, Shein, or AliExpress, remember that the first leg (China domestic + export) can look silent for up to a week before the destination country's carrier starts scanning again.