Demurrage, Detention and Terminal Storage: Three Clocks, Not One

A quotation that ends at the port is not a door-to-door price. The gap between discharge and the container leaving the terminal is where three separate charges live. They share a vocabulary but never a clock.

Key facts

• Two clocks, two locations. The US Federal Maritime Commission defines demurrage as the charge when a laden container exceeds its free time inside the marine terminal, and detention as the charge for extended use of a carrier's equipment outside it.
• Storage is a third thing. Terminal storage sits under the terminal's own tariff and is not defined by the federal rule at all.
• Free time has no statutory number. The Commission declined to define it, so two consignees on one berth can hold genuinely different allowances.

The three clocks, stated separately

Clock one starts when the container is discharged and stops when the empty is returned inside the quay; the tariff line attached to that period is demurrage. Clock two starts around the same moment but measures a different object — it runs while the carrier's box is outside the terminal gate in someone's hands, and stops when the equipment is back in the carrier's control. Clock three is the terminal's charge for the space the box occupies: a premises charge, not a transport charge.

So returning the box does not stop all three clocks, and keeping it inside the quay does not stop two of them. A landed-cost sheet that shows only the freight rate is a document waiting to be wrong.

What the regulator settled, and what it left open

The US definitions of the two container charges are regulatory and positional: inside the terminal for demurrage, outside it for detention. Billing rules then changed during 2025, and the change was not reversed. The requirements that took effect on 28 May 2024 sit in part 541; the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside the provision on properly issued invoices on 23 September 2025, and the Commission removed it by final rule on 29 December 2025. The other requirements stand.

Operationally, a contested arrival charge is argued about whether the clock ran at all — not about the paperwork.

Which side of the term carries each one

Incoterms decide the boundary between two parties, not the arithmetic of a terminal. On a delivered-duty-paid movement the clearing side is the party named at quoting stage, so arrival charges follow that responsibility. On an unpaid movement they land on the buyer's file, because the buyer presents the entry and takes delivery.

Table: what each line measures, and who normally carries it.

Two entries get disputed. Storage is charged by the premises, so the holder of the box may not be the party billed. And part-container cargo sits outside the container rules entirely: an allowance read in a container context does not transfer to a pallet of cartons at a freight station.

Where a fulfilment warehouse shortens the clock

Most arrival charges are not caused by an ocean delay. They are caused by what happens after discharge: who holds the paperwork to take delivery, whether the receiving door can accept the box, and how long the contents take to sort. A warehouse that receives the palletised consignment directly turns the equipment return into a same-day event: the empty goes back once the tail-lift is down and the count is signed.

That makes intake routing a cost question rather than a geography question. Shenzhen, 3,000 m², takes pallets and crates — where a consolidated business-to-business arrival belongs. Dongguan, 8,000 m², takes business-to-consumer stock. Suzhou, 13,000 m², consolidates Yangtze-delta suppliers. Together that is 24,000 m² of receiving capacity inside China, and three doors mean a consignment can go to whichever unloads fastest. Anything departing Guangdong must arrive in Guangdong. The goods-in event that closes an arrival clock also starts an inventory record, and our accuracy figure is counted per order line — below 0.01 percent for mis-picks and missed items — which matters because a pallet count is a line count.

The five questions to ask before you book

• Whose free time applies to this berth? Ask for the number and the start event; the allowance is contractual.
• Which party does the terminal recognise on release? The party billed for ground space is not always the party holding the box.
• Does my cargo arrive as a container or as part of one? Part-container arrivals fall under an agent tariff a container rule does not reach.
• Who returns the empty, and on what day? Detention stops at the carrier's control, so that appointment is the deadline.
• Can the receiving door take the box on the day it is available? A door that closes earlier than the terminal turns a same-day return into a two-day one.

What we do not claim

We cannot set a terminal's tariff, a carrier's allowance or a port's operating hours, and we do not represent that an arrival charge will not appear. We do not publish amounts for these charges: the structure is what you can read here, and the figure for your booking is settled in writing on the plan, because a charge quoted without a berth, a date and an equipment type is a guess. Send the discharge port, the cargo build and the receiving conditions you have, and we will mark where each clock starts and stops: tony@sbt56.com, or the enquiry form at Contact. Related: Frequently asked questions, DDP sea and air freight, all news and guides.

Is demurrage the same thing as detention?

No, and the difference is location rather than severity. Demurrage attaches to a laden container that has exceeded its allowance while still inside the marine terminal, so it measures how long a closed box occupies quay space. Detention attaches to the carrier's equipment after it leaves, so it measures how long you keep the line's box instead of returning an empty. One consignment can accumulate both, on different days.

Does a consignee have a legal right to free time?

Not from the regulator. The Commission declined to define free time in its billing rulemaking, so the allowance is whatever your booking contract, the carrier's tariff and the terminal's tariff between them provide. The practical edge: an allowance quoted verbally may not match the tariff applied at the berth, so two operators discharging at one port can hold different free time without either being misinformed.

Why does part-container cargo behave differently?

Because the statutory definitions are written around containers, and part-container freight does not arrive as one. It is deconsolidated at a freight station, where you meet handling and storage under the agent's own tariff, with no container-shaped allowance behind them. That is where a sender moving twenty cartons is most often surprised.

Operational guidance published 31 October 2026 (2026-10-31) by FulfillDock by SBT, operating 24,000 m² of warehousing across Shenzhen, Dongguan and Suzhou under a company registration reading Shenzhen Shibotong International Logistics Co., Ltd. Transit bands quoted on this site are estimates, and every figure above is a structure rather than an amount. Definitions and the 2025 amendment history are drawn from published pages of the Federal Maritime Commission and the US Federal Register; re-check before republishing, because arrival rules have moved twice since 2024.