Demurrage
Demurrage is the fee an ocean carrier or terminal charges when a loaded import container stays at the port beyond its allotted free time, commonly four to seven days after discharge from the vessel. It is billed per container per day, often on an escalating scale. Demurrage applies while the box is inside the terminal; detention is the separate charge for keeping the carrier's equipment too long after it leaves the gate.
Examples
Escalation math: A container lands at Long Beach with five free days, and a customs exam holds it through day nine. Days six and seven bill at $185, days eight and nine at $370: $1,110 on a single box, often more than the drayage itself.
Negotiated free time: An importer moving 600 containers a year extends contractual free time from five days to ten. Based on its history (12 percent of boxes exceeding free time by an average of three days at $200 per day), the clause is worth roughly $43,000 annually.
Both charges, one box: A container is picked up four days late ($740 of demurrage), then sits at the consignee's yard so long that the empty returns after free time ends ($450 of detention). Two invoices, two clocks, one slow dock.
Definition
The distinction that matters: demurrage is charged while the container sits inside the terminal, and detention is charged once it leaves, when the equipment comes back late. Same container, same trip, two separate clocks, and a badly handled box can run up both.
The demurrage clock starts when the container is discharged from the vessel. Free time runs (whatever the tariff or contract grants, commonly four to seven days), then the meter starts, usually on an escalating scale where day eight costs more than day one. The charge attaches to the container regardless of whose fault the delay is.
That no-fault structure is why it stings. Customs holds, missing paperwork, full receiving docks, chassis shortages, and late drayage pickups all burn free days, and during severe port congestion importers have paid demurrage on boxes the terminal physically could not release. Watching container dwell time daily, rather than discovering it on an invoice, is the difference between a fix and a fee.
The mitigation playbook is unglamorous: a per-container free-time expiry report, standing pre-pull arrangements with dray carriers, customs entries filed before vessel arrival, and extended free time negotiated into annual ocean freight contracts on lanes where delay is routine.
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