Operations · September 11, 2026
Demurrage is not bad luck. It has four causes, all of them visible days in advance, and every one of them is somebody's job.
Demurrage is what the terminal charges you for leaving a container inside the gate past its free time. At the Port of Tacoma terminals — Husky, Washington United Terminals, Pierce County Terminal and East Blair One — it is billed per container, per day, and it compounds quietly. One box is an annoyance. Fifteen boxes on a project is a line item somebody has to explain.
The useful thing about demurrage is that it is almost entirely preventable, and the prevention is unglamorous. Here is the method we actually use, and the four failure modes that cause nearly all of it.
The Last Free Day is set by the terminal, counted from vessel discharge, under the free-time allowance in your steamship line's tariff. Three things follow from that, and all three surprise people.
It is not the same for every box on the vessel. Different lines give different free time. Two containers discharged the same hour onto the same terminal can have LFDs three days apart.
Weekends and holidays usually count. Free time is normally calendar days, not working days. A box discharged on a Thursday with four free days is due out Monday — and Monday is when every other importer is also trying to get a gate slot.
It can move. An LFD extends if the vessel discharge is delayed, and it effectively shortens if a hold lands on the box. Whatever you wrote down on Tuesday may not be true on Thursday. Anyone who checks it once has not checked it.
This is the biggest one by a distance, and it is embarrassingly mundane. The arrival notice lands in an inbox. Somebody is on holiday, or it goes to accounts, or it goes to a shared address nobody owns. Four days later the container is past its free time and the first anyone hears about it is the invoice.
The fix: every container gets its LFD recorded the day the arrival notice arrives, on a list somebody looks at daily. Not an inbox — a list. On our side every box on the dispatch board carries its own Last Free Day, and it is visible to the dispatcher assigning the truck, not buried in an email thread.
How well that works is measurable, and we measure it: of the Ad Hoc containers that carry both a terminal LFD and our own outgate timestamp, 189 of 197 — 95.9% — went out on or before the Last Free Day. The other eight did not, which is the honest number. See the case studies for how that breaks down on specific programmes.
A container with a customs hold, a freight hold or a line hold cannot leave the terminal — but the free-time clock does not care. It keeps running while the box sits there, unmovable, accruing charges for a delay you cannot fix with a truck.
The fix: check holds early and check them again the day before you plan to pull. Customs exams are the ones that hurt: a VACIS or intensive exam can add days, and you will not be given a schedule. If a hold is going to run past the LFD, that is the moment to talk to the line about free time, not after the demurrage has accrued.
The paperwork side matters here too. A container with no delivery order released to the trucker is, operationally, a container on hold.
Very common, and the easiest to solve. The box is clear, the LFD is Friday, and the receiving warehouse has no appointment until the following Wednesday. If you leave it at the terminal, you pay terminal demurrage for five days at terminal rates.
The fix: pre-pull. Take the container off the terminal before the LFD and put it in a yard. You are converting an expensive clock into a cheap one — demurrage stops, and the box sits in container storage until the consignee is ready. You are still paying per-diem on the container, so a pre-pull is not free, but it is nearly always cheaper than terminal demurrage, and it removes the risk entirely rather than betting on the appointment holding.
Pre-pulling is also the only answer when the LFD falls on a weekend and your consignee does not work weekends.
You can be perfectly organised and still miss, because the terminal has to let you in. Tacoma terminals release appointment slots in windows, and during peak those windows fill. A box with a Friday LFD and no Thursday or Friday slot is going to be late no matter how good your intentions were.
The fix: book appointments as early as the terminal allows, and do not leave a container's only chance on its actual LFD. Build a day of slack in. On volume programmes, book slots as a block rather than one at a time — see the thirty-container Husky programme for what that looks like in practice.
Getting the box out on time stops demurrage. It does not stop per-diem, which the steamship line charges for their equipment being outside the terminal, and which runs until the empty is back at a depot that accepts it. Two charges, two parties, two clocks. A carrier who gets your box out on time and then sits on the empty for a week has saved you one charge and handed you another.
Full explanation: demurrage vs detention, and empty container returns and street turns for the other half of the problem.
The day the arrival notice lands: record the LFD on a board somebody reads daily. Confirm which terminal. Confirm the line's free time — do not assume it matches the last shipment.
Three days before the LFD: check holds. Check the delivery order is released to your trucker. Confirm the consignee's receiving date.
Two days before: have a gate appointment. If the consignee cannot take it, decide on the pre-pull now, not on the LFD.
After the pull: plan the empty return to a depot that accepts that line's equipment. That is not always the terminal it came from, and getting it wrong costs you a wasted move and more per-diem.
It is set by the terminal and by your steamship line's tariff, it rises on a sliding scale the longer the box sits, and it is charged per container per day. That is why the number is not worth memorising and the date is. Ask your line for their current tariff.
It depends on the line and your contract, not on the terminal. Four is common; some contracts give more. Two containers off the same vessel on different lines will have different Last Free Days.
Usually yes — free time is generally calendar days. This is the single most common reason a box that "had until Monday" was actually late.
Sometimes, where the delay was the terminal's or the line's — a vessel discharge delay, a terminal closure, an exam. It is a negotiation with the line, it is easier if you raise it immediately, and it is never something to plan around.
Almost always. You pay a move and yard storage instead of terminal demurrage, and you remove the risk rather than betting on an appointment. The exception is a single box where the consignee is only a day late.
Contractually the cargo owner, in practice whoever was watching the clock. A drayage carrier who does not track Last Free Days on your behalf is leaving that job with you while charging you as though they had it.
Tell us what you are moving and a dispatcher replies the same day.