PLEASE READ THIS FIRST. The purpose of the Maritime Administration’s E-Learning Website is to provide you with a base of instruction on the U.S.-flag vessel requirements of the Cargo Preference laws of the United States as they apply to government cargoes.

The course material is divided into four sections, including an introductory course. The introduction will provide you with some important background on the essential nature of maintaining a U.S.-flag Merchant fleet, as well as an overview of the cargo preference legal and regulatory basis.

After completing the introductory section, a prerequisite for the other courses, we encourage you to explore the individual Cargo Preference courses of interest to you. Specifically, we offer follow-on training on the U.S.-flag vessel requirements for shipping: Military Cargoes, Civilian Agency Cargoes, and Agricultural Cargoes, each of which have separate legal foundations and related regulations.

The training should only take approximately twenty minutes for each course or eighty minutes for the entire curriculum including the introductory section. Please set aside time to complete an entire section (twenty minutes) at a time. If you have to leave a specific module in mid-course it will not be scored as complete and you will have to restart the module from the beginning. As you finish each training module (i.e., Military, Civilian, and Agricultural) you will receive a certificate of completion that indicates you have “Completed Cargo Preference Training” in that area.