A Docket shipment flagged critical: demurrage in 7 days, EPR registration missing and a fumigation stamp query, above the invoice, route, free-time and CHA details. — A container against its clock — free time ends 14 Jul, two documents unresolved.

Demurrage credit: the relief your carrier applies for

A demurrage credit is relief against port demurrage for days the container could not be collected. Port Houston credits one day per 24 consecutive hours it cannot provide container services, "upon application, to the steamship line's account", and denies applications after six months. Los Angeles waives only on the steamship company's written request. The importer pays; the carrier applies.

Demurrage credit: A credit or waiver against accrued port demurrage for days on which the container could not be collected, granted under a published port tariff. In the two US tariffs that set out the mechanism, the party entitled to apply is the ocean carrier, not the importer who bears the charge.

The route a demurrage credit takes at Port Houston The event is the port's, the application is the carrier's, the account credited is the carrier's. The importer appears nowhere in the subrule and pays the charge.

A demurrage credit is a day of port demurrage handed back because the box could not be collected on it. The ports that grant one say so in their published tariffs, which means the entitlement is readable rather than negotiable. What the tariffs also say, and what almost nothing written for importers mentions, is who is allowed to ask.

Houston: one day per 24 hours, to the line’s account

Port of Houston Authority Tariff No. 14 carries the mechanism under the heading Import Demurrage Credit, inside the same subrule that sets the free time and the rates:

Any occurrence which results in the Port Authority’s inability to provide container services for 24 consecutive hours or more will result in a demurrage credit of one day, upon application, to the steamship line’s account for affected loaded containers.

Three details decide whether it is worth anything to the importer. The credit goes to the steamship line’s account. It arrives only “upon application”, and the application has to carry the vessel name, the voyage number, the date of the occurrence and its type. And it expires: “All applications for demurrage credit must be received within six months of the occurrence. Applications received after six months will be denied.”

The same subrule is what makes the credit necessary. Demurrage at Barbours Cut is charged per day “including days when truck gates are closed for scheduled terminal closures”, and the closure days “shall be counted toward the commencement and assessment of demurrage”. The clock does not stop when the gate shuts. A credit is how a day comes back, after the fact, on somebody else’s application.

Who bears the demurrage and who may ask for it back Read off Port Houston Subrule 093 and Port of Los Angeles Item 780 Note 2. The split is the reason a credit an importer is entitled to in substance still has to be asked for by somebody else.

Los Angeles: a waiver on the steamship company’s written request

Port of Los Angeles Tariff No. 4 reaches the same place by a different route. Item 780’s second note gives the Executive Director a power to waive wharf demurrage in a short list of situations, and gates it the same way:

When requested in writing by the steamship company and when verification can be made from steamship company’s records, the Executive Director may waive wharf demurrage …

The listed situations are narrow and specific: cargo that needs recoopering, small portions of a shipment that could not be located when the rest was delivered, merchandise discharged without billing while ownership is settled, and portions held in bond by Customs for the appraiser’s store. None of them is “the terminal was shut”, which Houston covers and Los Angeles handles separately.

Where Los Angeles does act without an application is a strike. Under Item 750, a general waterfront strike of five calendar days or more keeps cargo on free time until the free period expires and moves cargo already running on demurrage to the lower storage rate while the strike lasts. Then it snaps back: anything still on hand on the sixteenth day after the strike ends returns to demurrage.

Why the asymmetry matters to the desk that pays

A port demurrage charge normally reaches the importer through the line, which is the party the terminal bills and the party named in the carrier tariff. So the entitlement and the invoice sit with different people. The importer has the loss and the incentive. The carrier has the standing, the records the port verifies against, and no particular urgency, because it is passing the charge on either way.

That turns a tariff right into a chase, and it is a chase with a deadline. Six months at Houston sounds generous until you notice the sequence: the terminal closes, the box sits, the demurrage invoice arrives weeks later, somebody queries it, the query goes to a forwarder, the forwarder asks the line. Four handoffs, each with its own reply time, against a clock that started on the day of the occurrence rather than on the day you found out.

Two things make it winnable. Knowing the right question, which is not “can you waive this” but “have you applied for the credit under Subrule 093, and on what date”. And having the dates to hand, because the application needs the vessel, the voyage and the occurrence, and a desk that can produce those in an email is a desk the line can act for without doing any work. A charge an importer disputes rather than credits goes down a different road: the charge complaint route at the regulator, which is slower and answers a different question.

What Docket does with it

It holds the dated record the application needs, per shipment, without anyone assembling it: vessel and voyage, the discharge and availability dates, the terminal’s own closure and holiday schedule, and every chase sent and reply received against each document. When a charge lands, the question of which days the box could not have moved is a lookup rather than a reconstruction, and the request to the line goes out while the six months is still mostly unspent. It is the same record that answers the other version of the question, which is whose paperwork was late, and it is the reason demurrage and detention software that keeps the application’s own facts is worth more than a dashboard of charges already incurred.

Questions traders ask

What is a demurrage credit?

A day of demurrage the port gives back because the container could not be moved. Port of Houston Authority Tariff No. 14 states the clearest version: "Any occurrence which results in the Port Authority's inability to provide container services for 24 consecutive hours or more will result in a demurrage credit of one day, upon application, to the steamship line's account for affected loaded containers." Further 24-hour periods earn further credits.

Who can apply for a demurrage credit?

The shipping line, in both published tariffs that say. Houston's credit is applied "to the steamship line's account" and the application has to name the "Vessel name, voyage number, date of occurrence and type of occurrence". Los Angeles waives wharf demurrage only "when requested in writing by the steamship company and when verification can be made from steamship company's records". An importer with a demurrage invoice in hand is not the party the tariff is addressing.

Is there a deadline to apply?

At Houston, six months. The subrule is explicit: "All applications for demurrage credit must be received within six months of the occurrence. Applications received after six months will be denied." That is a shorter window than it sounds, because the importer usually learns about the closure from the invoice and the invoice can arrive weeks after the box has gone.

What about a strike or a shutdown?

Los Angeles handles a general waterfront strike of five calendar days or more by rule rather than by application. Cargo still on free time stays on free time until the free period expires, cargo already on demurrage moves to the lower storage rate while the strike runs, and anything still on hand "on the sixteenth day following the end of the strike" goes back onto demurrage. Houston's credit covers any occurrence that stops container services for 24 hours, named or not.

Can I get the carrier's detention credited too?

That is a separate argument under a separate document. A port or terminal tariff governs the ground the box sits on; the carrier's demurrage and detention are governed by the carrier's own tariff and your service contract. Los Angeles says so in its own text, that equipment owned or leased by ocean carriers is subject to the demurrage or detention charges and free time provisions in the individual carrier's tariff. Two charges, two rulebooks, two applications.

What should an importer do about it?

Keep the dated record and ask early. The facts a credit application needs are the vessel, the voyage, the date of the occurrence and its type, and those are facts the carrier has and you can confirm. Ask the line, in writing, whether it has applied, and ask before the six months at Houston runs. A request made while the terminal closure is recent is a request somebody can verify; a request made after the window is a request the tariff says will be denied.

Related terms

Demurrage — The charge a carrier or terminal levies when a container remains inside the port past its allotted free time, accruing daily per container until the box is collected.
Demurrage Invoice — The invoice a terminal or ocean carrier issues for the days a container remained inside the port beyond its free time, stating the container and bill of lading references, the free-time period, the daily rate applied and the number of days charged.
Terminal storage charge — The charge a marine terminal operator levies for an import container occupying terminal ground beyond its free dwell time, set out in the terminal's published scale of rates and identical for every importer at that terminal, as distinct from the carrier's demurrage.
Carrier tariff — A common carrier's published schedule of its rates, charges, classifications, rules, regulations and practices, kept open for public inspection. It is where free time, demurrage and detention terms are stated, and it is a different thing from a customs tariff, which is a schedule of duty rates.
Charge Complaint — A complaint to the US Federal Maritime Commission under 46 U.S.C. 41310 about a charge assessed by an ocean common carrier — most often demurrage or detention — which the Commission must promptly investigate and for which the carrier bears the burden of establishing reasonableness.
Billed party — The person who receives a demurrage or detention invoice and is responsible for paying the charge on it. In US trade the invoice must state the basis for why that person is the proper party of interest and thus liable.
Unjust and Unreasonable Practice — A failure by an ocean carrier, marine terminal operator or ocean transportation intermediary to establish, observe and enforce just and reasonable practices for receiving, handling, storing or delivering property, prohibited by 46 U.S.C. 41102(c). A claim needs five elements.
Free time — The grace period allowed before demurrage or detention begins to accrue, counted from discharge in plain calendar days at most terminals and in working days at some, and set by the carrier's tariff or by the importer's service contract.