Terminal storage charge: the port clock beside demurrage

Most importers learn the phrase when a second invoice arrives. The carrier’s bill for demurrage was expected, argued over, sometimes partly waived. Then the terminal’s storage bill lands, for the same container and an overlapping set of days, and nobody on the desk can immediately say whether it is a duplicate.

It is not a duplicate. It is rent for the ground.

What is being charged for

A terminal storage charge is levied by the marine terminal operator for an import container occupying its yard after the free dwell time expires. The carrier’s demurrage is levied for the container itself. Two assets, two owners, two bills.

The cleanest statement of the split sits in the American billing rule, which defines both charges in one sentence and separates them by object rather than by biller. Under 46 CFR § 541.3, demurrage or detention means charges assessed by carriers or terminal operators “related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping containers, but not including freight charges”. Marine terminal space, or shipping containers. Land, or box.

Outside the United States the two are usually billed by different parties under different names, which is why a desk that has only ever seen one word for it is caught out.

The published one and the private one

The practical difference is not the amount. It is whether you can look it up.

A terminal’s scale of rates is a document. It is approved, dated, and applies to every user of that terminal on that day, which means a desk can know its storage exposure on a lane before the vessel sails. The carrier’s free time cannot be looked up at all — it is a term of your contract, and two importers moving identical boxes on the same vessel routinely have different allowances.

Three days, or ten

The numbers are further apart than most desks expect, and the gap is not explained by the size of the port.

At Jebel Ali, an ordinary import full container gets 10 free days, counted from the date of discharge from the vessel, then AED 82 a day up to 20ft and AED 164 over 20ft for five days, rising to AED 153 and AED 306 thereafter. The rates are in DP World’s published UAE Region tariff book, and the Jebel Ali port page carries the bands in full.

At Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal, the import free dwell time is 3 days. After that, days 4 to 15 cost US$9.33 a day up to 20ft, US$18.66 above 20ft and up to 40ft, and US$27.99 above 40ft; days 16 to 30 double those; beyond 30 days they double again, to US$37.28, US$74.56 and US$111.84. Those are the rates in the edition indexed by 0.39% with effect from 1 May 2026; the tariff is re-indexed annually, so check the current edition before planning against them. The port’s other four container terminals publish their own storage tariffs, with their own free periods, set out on the Nhava Sheva port page.

At Mundra, all three container terminals publish the same tariff, and it makes the allowance depend on something else again: an import laden container gets 2 free days if it is evacuated by road and 10 if it moves by rail. The bands and the counting rule are on the Mundra port storage charges page.

At Melbourne the two stevedores that publish a tariff both allow 3 free days and do not mean the same three. VICT at Webb Dock counts calendar days, with the first of them decided by whether discharge finished before 06:00; Patrick Melbourne counts “three (3) working days including day of availability”. Same port, same number, two deadlines, and on a long weekend they are days apart — which is the cleanest proof on this site that a free period is a unit and not a number. The rates, the one-off yard handling fee each terminal adds to the first chargeable day, and the day on which the cheaper terminal becomes the dearer one are on the Melbourne port storage charges page.

At Port Botany the same stevedore charges the same storage to the cent as it does in Melbourne and Brisbane, at AUD 255.60 per TEU per day with three working days including the day of availability, while the flat Landside Terminal Charge every laden container pays anyway differs at each of the three ports. The price of being late is national; the price of doing nothing wrong is local. That split, and the hazardous surcharge that changes owner the moment free time expires, are on the Sydney port storage charges page.

In the United States the charge wears the other party’s name. Port of Los Angeles Tariff No. 4 calls its own version of this charge wharf demurrage, assessed against merchandise left on a municipal wharf after four free days, and it says in the same document that carrier equipment is subject to the demurrage and detention in the carrier’s own tariff. So one American invoice can carry two lines called demurrage from two parties on two clocks: the bands and the 3 a.m. start are on the Los Angeles port storage charges page, and the once-per-crossing charge their measurement basis comes from is wharfage.

Both the Jebel Ali and Nhava Sheva terminals are operated by DP World, which JNPA’s own terminal listing confirms for NSICT. Same operator, one ocean apart, and the free allowance differs by a factor of more than three. Whatever number your desk carries in its head for “how long we have at the port”, it is right for at most one lane.

The clocks do not even count the same days

This is the part that survives into the invoice dispute, and almost nothing written about demurrage mentions it.

NSICT’s scale of rates says the storage period “shall be reckoned from the day following the day of landing”, and that free dwell time “shall be exclusive of customs notified holidays and port non-working days”. Jebel Ali counts from the date of discharge. Mundra counts “from the day of landing” and says the period “will include Sundays and holidays”, which is NSICT’s rule read backwards. A carrier’s demurrage free time is ordinarily counted in straight calendar days from discharge.

So on one container you can have two free periods that begin on different days and consume days at different rates. A public holiday costs you a demurrage day and no storage day. The last free day you wrote on the file is one of two, and a desk working to a single date is working to the wrong one about half the time.

Which is why the thing a desk actually needs when the second invoice lands is not an argument but a record: the tariff edition each clock was derived from, the day the pack was complete, and the party who held each document. That is a job for shipping cost dispute software rather than for a spreadsheet rebuilt after the fact, because the charge is already incurred by the time anyone opens the file.

Three further clauses in the same section are worth reading before an invoice arrives: hazardous containers attract storage 25% above the ordinary slab, over-dimensional and over-high containers three times it, and charges denominated in US dollars are recovered in rupees at the reference rate prevailing on the date the vessel entered port limits — not the date of the bill.

When it is not payable

Storage is waivable on grounds written into the tariff, which is a different thing from negotiation.

NSICT’s own notes say users “will not have to pay storage charges for the period during which NSICT is not in a position to deliver/ shift the containers when requested by the users”, and the section sets out when storage ceases on containers seized or confiscated by customs. Those are clauses you can cite by number, and they sit beside the Indian customs route to a waiver on the carrier side, which runs through a detention certificate.

None of that helps with the ordinary case. Storage that accrued because the document pack was not ready is payable, and arguing it is a waste of a week.

What a desk does about it

Hold both tariffs per lane, and derive two dates rather than one.

The terminal’s number can be read off a published document and stored against the port. The carrier’s has to come out of the service contract and be stored against the carrier, the lane and the equipment type. Then the deadline that matters is the earlier of the two, and every document in the pack gets a due date counted back from it.

That is the arithmetic. The work is getting the pack finished before the date, which means chasing a supplier, a bank, a forwarder and a broker who between them owe you six documents and none of whom reports to you. Demurrage detention monitoring software tells you the date is coming. It is the chasing that changes whether you make it.