Freight basics

Detention and Demurrage: What Carriers Can Actually Bill For

Published May 29, 2026

Detention applies when a driver waits beyond the carrier's free time at a shipping or receiving facility — typically 2 hours free, then $60 to $120 per hour. Demurrage applies when a container or trailer sits unpicked-up beyond the carrier's storage allowance — typically 4 to 5 free days at a port or rail ramp, then $150 to $400 per day. Both are legitimate charges. Both are routinely overbilled. Your first audit with Eller is free.

Detention vs demurrage: when each applies

The two charges look related and they share a logic — you pay when equipment sits past free time — but they apply to different equipment, at different places, under different contracts. Mixing them up is the first reason invoices go uncontested.

Dimension	Detention	Demurrage
What sits	The truck and driver, on standby	A container, chassis, or trailer
Where	Shipper or receiver dock	Port, rail ramp, terminal
Free time	2 hours typical (LTL / TL live load)	4 to 5 days at a port, 1 to 2 days at a rail ramp
Charge	$60 to $120 per hour	$150 to $400 per day per container
Usually liable	The shipper (outbound) or consignee (inbound)	The consignee on the Bill of Lading (BOL)

Drop-and-hook moves complicate the detention picture. Because the driver leaves a preloaded or empty trailer and is gone in minutes, most master contracts give drop-and-hook unlimited free time. Live load and live unload are where detention bills actually pile up. Demurrage runs on a separate clock entirely — a container that gets discharged from a vessel at a port and sits unpicked-up at the terminal accrues demurrage whether or not anyone is waiting on it, and the meter usually runs faster after the first 24 to 48 hours of free time expire.

Worked example: national distributor, $720K–$1.16M recoverable detention + demurrage per year

A national distributor with 200+ daily inbound truckloads (~52,000 inbound LTL/TL shipments per year) and 8,500 import containers per year through East and West Coast ports.

Detention exposure (truck-side): dispute rate 4–6% of inbound TLs at average $325 per disputable hour-bucket = $260K–$390K per year of disputable detention. Recovery rate 70–82% with receiver yard-log and driver-app GPS evidence — $185K–$320K per year recovered.

Demurrage exposure (port-side): 8,500 containers × 4.2-day average dwell × $215/day = $7.7M of total demurrage billing. Of that, 6–10% is disputable on consignee-notification grounds, equipment-availability disputes, or labor-event exemptions — $465K–$770K per year of disputable demurrage. Recovery rate 65–80% — $300K–$615K per year recovered.

Total combined annual recovery on detention + demurrage at this scale: $485K to $935K per year.

For Fortune 500 enterprise importers with 50,000+ annual containers and 1,000+ daily truckloads, recoverable detention + demurrage routinely runs $4M–$8M per year — typically the largest single recovery category for high-volume importers.

What carriers can actually bill for (and what they can't)

After several years of detention disputes, the pattern is consistent: about 40 percent of billed detention either has no carrier-side evidence or directly contradicts the receiver's yard log. The list below is what we apply to every detention line.

Carriers can bill for:

• Documented driver wait time at the dock after free time expires, with a matching in-gate timestamp.
• Documented driver wait time at the gate when the facility logged arrival and refused entry.
• Detour or layover time defined separately in the MRA, when the load was held by the shipper or consignee.

Carriers cannot bill for:

• Time the carrier itself caused — broken seal, missing paperwork on the carrier side, equipment failure.
• Time the driver was on a personal break, including the federal 30-minute break inside the wait window.
• Detention with no arrival timestamp matching the receiver's facility log.
• Detention on the shipper side when the BOL was clear, the appointment was kept, and the dock was open at the start of the free-time window.
• Detention billed in 30-minute or full-hour rounding blocks past the actual departure time when the MRA specifies billing in 15-minute increments.

Evidence carriers must produce for a valid detention bill

A detention line should never stand on the carrier's word alone. These are the documents we expect to see before allowing a charge to pay:

• In-gate and out-gate time stamps from the receiver's or shipper's gate log.
• Driver app GPS log of arrival and departure (most major carriers capture this automatically).
• Signed dock receipt with timestamp from the receiving party.
• Photo evidence of the trailer at the gate — some carrier programs require this for any detention claim.
• The BOL with the explicit free-time clause referenced on the invoice.

If two of those five are missing or inconsistent, the line is disputable. If only the carrier's own timestamp exists with no facility-side log, it is automatically disputable under most MRAs.

What your contract should say about detention and demurrage

Detention and demurrage are contract terms first and operational events second. The single biggest determinant of whether a charge sticks is what your master agreement says. These are the clause patterns we look for:

Free time clause. “Standard free time for live unload shall be 2 hours from in-gate timestamp at the receiver facility. Drop-and-hook moves shall have unlimited free time. Excess detention shall be billed in 15-minute increments at $95 per hour.”

Evidence clause. “Detention charges shall require carrier-side in-gate AND out-gate time stamps corroborated by the shipper or consignee facility log. Charges submitted without facility-side corroboration shall be void.”

Demurrage notice clause. “Demurrage charges shall not accrue until consignee has received written pickup notification at the destination port or rail ramp. Free time shall not begin to run during weather closures, port labor disruptions, or other force majeure events.”

Reasonable cause exemption. “Detention shall not be billable when the delay is attributable to the carrier, including missing or incorrect paperwork on the carrier side, broken seals, late arrival, equipment failure, or driver hours-of-service issues.”

What we can't tell from the bill alone

Detention and demurrage disputes are evidence-bound in a way that misclassified accessorials or fuel surcharges are not. Without the shipper or receiver yard log, the carrier's own in-gate and out-gate stamps, the driver app GPS trace, and a BOL with clear free-time language, the carrier's claim usually stands by default. A line item that just reads “DET — 3.5 HR — $332.50” is not enough to dispute and not enough to approve. The bill is the question, not the answer.

That is also why detention is the single accessorial category most likely to escape an internal accounts payable review. The dollar amounts per line are too small to clear the human-review threshold, the supporting evidence sits in a system AP does not touch, and the dispute window closes before anyone goes looking. Audits catch what the invoice and the approval workflow were not designed to catch.

How Eller Audit handles this

We cross-check every detention line against your yard log and the carrier's stated in-gate and out-gate timestamps. Demurrage disputes are filed with port or rail ramp pickup notification records and the controlling BOL terms. When the facility-side evidence contradicts the carrier's bill, we draft the dispute, file it through the carrier's claims portal under the controlling MRA, and recover the overage. The engagement is performance-based: you pay a share of what we recover, and nothing on the lines that hold up. Most of our detention disputes are resolved inside the carrier's standard 30 to 45 day claims window, and we keep your accounts payable team out of the back-and-forth so the relationship with the carrier stays clean.

The same pattern applies to demurrage on the ocean and rail side, with one wrinkle: pickup notification disputes hinge on what the terminal's published notice procedure actually requires. If the carrier or steamship line invoiced demurrage without sending notice through the agreed channel — email, EDI, or the terminal's portal — the free-time clock may not have started yet under most master agreements, which means the days billed do not exist.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading