Empty container return: the date detention stops
The empty container return is the moment the carrier's box is accepted back at the depot it nominated, and it is the event that stops the detention clock. The US billing rule requires eight timing fields on a demurrage or detention invoice and the return date is not among them: the invoice says when your clock started, and the only record of when it stopped is your own gate receipt.
- Empty container return
- The acceptance of a carrier's empty container back at the depot or terminal the carrier nominates, recorded on an interchange receipt. It is the event that ends the importer's detention liability, and the date it happened is not a required field on the detention invoice.
Every import container runs two meters and one event switches between them. The gate-out stops the demurrage and starts the detention; it is written about far more often than the event at the other end, which is the one that decides what the detention comes to in the end. Detention runs until the carrier has its box back.
The definition in the US billing rule is what makes that precise. Demurrage and detention are one defined charge split by which asset is occupied: marine terminal space, or the shipping container. Once the box is off the terminal you are no longer occupying their land, you are holding their equipment, and you hold it until a depot takes it.
Delivery is not the return
Three dates get confused on a desk, and only the last of them ends anything.
The box is delivered when it reaches your yard. It is unloaded when your people finish with it. It is returned when the carrier’s nominated depot accepts it back and writes an interchange receipt. Nothing the importer does on its own premises moves the detention clock, because the carrier is not party to any of it and no record of it exists in the carrier’s system. A box devanned on Tuesday and standing in the yard until Friday because no return slot was open has accrued three days of detention on an empty container.
The invoice will not tell you when it stopped
This is the part worth knowing before the bill arrives. 46 CFR 541.6(b) sets out the timing information a demurrage or detention invoice must carry at a minimum, and it is eight fields: the invoice date, the due date, the allowed free time in days, the start date of free time, the end date of free time, the container availability date for imports, the earliest return date for exports, and the specific dates charged.
Read the list for what is absent. For an import, the rule requires the date the clock could have started, which is the container availability date, and the days the carrier says it is charging. It requires nothing at all about the date the empty came back. The regulator made the billing party print the beginning of the exposure and left the end of it to the billed party to prove.
So the document that settles a detention dispute is not produced by the person charging you. It is the gate receipt from the return, held by whichever haulier dropped the box off, and it is usually in a cab or an email attachment rather than in the shipment file. That is the whole of the asymmetry: the carrier’s clock has an automatic start and a manual stop, and the manual part is yours.
What the Commission has already said about a full depot
A return that cannot happen is the common case and the regulator has addressed it directly. The Federal Maritime Commission’s interpretive rule on unjust and unreasonable practices begins from the incentive principle, asking whether a charge is “serving [its] intended primary purposes as financial incentives to promote freight fluidity”, and then applies that principle to this exact situation:
Absent extenuating circumstances, practices and regulations that provide for imposition of detention when it does not serve its incentivizing purposes, such as when empty containers cannot be returned, are likely to be found unreasonable.
Set that beside the certification the billing rule requires. Under 46 CFR 541.6(e) the billing party must state on the invoice both that the charges are consistent with the Commission’s demurrage and detention rules and that “The billing party’s performance did not cause or contribute to the underlying invoiced charges”.
A carrier whose nominated depot turned your truck away on three named days, and who then bills those days, has certified something on your invoice that your own records contradict. That is a far stronger position than arguing the charge was unfair, and it is available only to a desk that wrote down the refusal on the day it happened: which depot, which appointment, which driver, what they were told. A detention certificate covers the days somebody has already agreed to waive; this covers the days nobody has.
What this asks of the file
Two dates and two receipts, per container, kept where the invoice can be checked against them rather than in a mailbox: the gate-out that started the detention, the gate-in empty that stopped it, and the refused attempts in between. Chasing a haulier for a scan of an interchange receipt three weeks after the box went back is the job nobody has time for, which is why the receipt is missing on exactly the shipments where the bill is largest.
Demurrage and detention software that holds both ends of the clock is the plain version of the requirement: it stores the dated record as the events happen, so the invoice gets checked against a file rather than against a memory. The vendor question is short — when a detention invoice arrives, can the tool show the empty return date and the document behind it, or does it only show the days the carrier billed?
Questions traders ask
What does 'gate in empty at depot' mean?
That the carrier's empty container has been accepted back into a depot after you unloaded it. On an import it is the status that matters most, because detention is charged for your use of the carrier's box and that use ends when the box is back in the carrier's hands. The depot writes an interchange receipt with the date, the time, the container number and the condition of the box as it came in. That receipt is the only dated proof you will hold that the clock stopped.
When does detention stop on an import container?
At the empty return, not at delivery and not when your warehouse finished unloading. The box has to reach the depot the carrier nominated and be accepted there. A truck turned away at a full depot has not returned the container, which is why the queue at the return gate is a billing problem and not a haulage one.
Does the carrier have to print the empty return date on the invoice?
No. 46 CFR 541.6(b) lists eight timing fields a demurrage or detention invoice must carry at a minimum — the invoice date, the due date, the allowed free time in days, the start and end dates of free time, the container availability date for imports, the earliest return date for exports, and the specific dates charged. The date the empty came back is not one of them. The rule makes the billing party print when your clock started; proving when it stopped is yours.
What if the depot would not take the empty back?
The Federal Maritime Commission has published its view. Its interpretive rule says that, absent extenuating circumstances, practices that impose detention when it does not serve its incentivising purposes, such as when empty containers cannot be returned, are likely to be found unreasonable. The same billing rule makes the billing party certify on the invoice that its own performance did not cause or contribute to the charge. A refused return, dated, is evidence against that certification.
What is the difference between gate out empty and gate in empty?
Direction, and which shipment they belong to. Gate out empty is an empty leaving a depot, usually on its way to a shipper for stuffing, so it sits at the front of an export. Gate in empty is an empty being accepted back, which sits at the end of an import and stops the detention. The words are read in the order of the box rather than the order of the shipment, and only one of them is your clock.
Sources
- 46 CFR § 541.6(b), Contents of invoice — the eight timing fields a demurrage or detention invoice must carry at a minimum: "(1) The invoice date; (2) The invoice due date; (3) The allowed free time in days; (4) The start date of free time; (5) The end date of free time; (6) For imports, the container availability date; (7) For exports, the earliest return date; and (8) The specific date(s) for which demurrage and/or detention were charged." No field requires the date an empty import container was returned · checked 2026-10-13
- 46 CFR § 541.6(e), Certifications — a demurrage or detention invoice must contain statements from the billing party that "The charges are consistent with any of the Federal Maritime Commission's rules related to demurrage and detention" and that "The billing party's performance did not cause or contribute to the underlying invoiced charges" · checked 2026-10-13
- 46 CFR § 545.5(c)(2)(ii), Empty container return — "Absent extenuating circumstances, practices and regulations that provide for imposition of detention when it does not serve its incentivizing purposes, such as when empty containers cannot be returned, are likely to be found unreasonable." § 545.5(c)(1) states the incentive principle: the Commission considers "the extent to which demurrage and detention are serving their intended primary purposes as financial incentives to promote freight fluidity". Published at 85 FR 29665, 18 May 2020 · checked 2026-10-13
- 46 CFR § 541.3, Definitions — "Demurrage or detention" covers charges "related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping containers, but not including freight charges", one definition split by which asset is occupied · checked 2026-10-13
- Docket operational baseline, import–export desk