Demurrage and Detention: Up, Up and Away

Demurrage and detention (D&D) — the per-day penalties carriers charge when containers overstay their allotted "free time" at a terminal or outside it — have quietly become one of the largest and least predictable line items in international ocean freight. What used to be an occasional, congestion-driven surprise has hardened into a structural cost of doing business, and 2025-2026 data suggests the trend is not reversing.

Carriers are tightening the screws on free time

The mechanics of D&D are simple: a carrier grants a fixed number of free days to clear a container through customs and off the terminal (demurrage) and to unpack and return the empty box (detention). Once that window closes, a per-day charge begins, usually on a tiered schedule that escalates the longer the container sits. The trend over the past several years has been toward shorter windows and steeper tiers. Standard free time, which not long ago commonly ran seven to ten days at many ports, is now typically three to seven days for demurrage and four to seven for detention, with carriers applying the tightest windows during peak season when yard space is scarcest. Industry advisors tracking 2026 tariff filings note that steamship lines have shortened free days at many U.S. ports and hardened empty-return rules, making detention "almost automatic" in some lanes where berthing slots are limited. Maersk's own published tariff update, effective January 1, 2026, illustrates the pattern directly: free time allowances at most U.S. locations were left unchanged, but detention per diem rates were raised across the board — by $10 to $40 per container per tier depending on port and equipment type — while export demurrage free time was cut specifically at Miami and Port Everglades. The net effect for shippers is the same whether carriers touch the free-time clock or the tariff rate: less runway and a bigger bill once that runway runs out.

Per diem rates have climbed well above historical norms

Concrete per-day figures tell the story of just how much this has changed. Where early-tier demurrage and detention rates a decade ago often sat in the $50-$100 per day range, 2025-2026 tariffs commonly start at $100-$150 per day for the first few days past free time and escalate to $250 or more per day beyond that, with some ports and equipment categories running as high as $300 per day for larger containers. At major hubs like Los Angeles and New York-New Jersey, a container that sits for roughly two weeks past its free time can now generate more than $2,500 in combined D&D charges, and industry guides note that in the most extreme cases, accumulated fees can exceed 20 times the value of the container itself. Put another way: demurrage and detention alone can now add an estimated 10-25% on top of total shipping costs for an affected shipment, and even a handful of days of delay can inflate the cost of moving a single box by 50% or more. The escalation is deliberate — tariffs are structured in tiers specifically so that days one through three or five are relatively mild, while the charges beyond that jump sharply, creating strong financial pressure to clear cargo quickly, whether or not the delay was within the shipper's control.

The Global Cost

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission provides the most authoritative baseline, since it collects quarterly D&D billing data directly from nine major ocean carriers — CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, Maersk, MSC, ONE, and Yang Ming. Between April 2020 and March 2025, those nine carriers collected roughly $15.4 billion in D&D charges. But that FMC figure only covers nine carriers' U.S.-related billings; several industry cost guides put the true global annual toll far higher, with one widely cited 2026 estimate placing total worldwide demurrage and detention costs at around $22 billion a year. For 2026, most forecasters expect rates to keep climbing even if underlying volumes stabilize: carriers are pushing through inflation-linked tariff increases. Recurring port congestion, exacerbated by the Strait of Hormuz crisis, is expected to keep pressure on free time windows through the year.

A regional picture: no two ports play by the same rules

Global averages mask sharp regional differences in how D&D is applied, and those differences are widening rather than converging.

Europe has moved from being a relatively lenient region to one of the more expensive, even as North American congestion has eased. Rotterdam and Antwerp remain among the roughly dozen major ports worldwide where D&D charges are still running higher than their 2020 baseline, according to Drewry's advisory practice, which points to rising energy and labour costs, higher land and port fees, and new EU green-shipping rules as structural drivers rather than temporary congestion. A newer complication is the move toward individualized, per-shipment customs clearance rather than consolidated bill-of-lading processing, which Drewry notes has made Rotterdam clearance measurably slower and more prone to eating into free time. Carriers have responded with the same tariff-tightening tactics seen in the U.S.: Maersk revised its demurrage and detention tariffs across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Poland effective September 2025, and most European free time still sits at the shorter end of the 3-7 day global norm.

Asia carries some of the highest per diem rates in the world alongside some of the most complex billing structures. A Container xChange benchmarking exercise ranked India fourth globally by average D&D charge at roughly $435 per container per day, and the structural reason is regulatory rather than incidental: unlike the U.S. and EU, where demurrage and detention clocks run sequentially, many Indian ports allow both to accrue simultaneously, effectively doubling the daily cost during the overlap window. Ports across East and Southeast Asia — including Ningbo, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Xiamen, Port Klang, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou — are also named among the roughly dozen ports globally still charging more than their 2020 levels, reflecting sustained volume growth and periodic congestion at some of the world's busiest terminals.

Latin America and Africa share a different problem: it is less about aggressive tariff design and more about inconsistent enforcement and thin infrastructure. Ports such as Santos in Brazil, Durban in South Africa, and Lagos in Nigeria are frequently cited for slow customs clearance, limited terminal capacity, and uneven application of free-time rules, which extends dwell times and triggers demurrage before a forwarder can complete clearance procedures — even when the delay has nothing to do with the shipper's own readiness. Brazilian and other South American exporters are also navigating capacity-constrained vessel space into Europe, which is pushing carriers to recommend booking three to four weeks in advance simply to secure space, with any slippage adding further dwell-time risk once cargo does move.

The Middle East has become the most acute regional flashpoint in 2026. Escalating regional conflict led to an effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February 2026, with major carriers including Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd suspending transits and diverting vessel rotations, while renewed attacks on Red Sea shipping reversed the partial recovery seen after the late-2025 ceasefire. Gulf gateway ports including Jebel Ali, Jeddah, Khor Fakkan, Sohar, and Salalah saw severe congestion as diverted vessels backed up, with Khor Fakkan reportedly reaching full congestion on some days. Carriers' response illustrates how differently D&D is being managed in a genuine force majeure situation compared with routine congestion: rather than tightening free time, Maersk extended free time allowances to 15 days at Jebel Ali and Salalah for affected containers, and offered paid free-time extension packages at Salalah and Jeddah, acknowledging that normal penalty structures are unworkable when the disruption is entirely outside the shipper's control. Whether that flexibility persists once the immediate crisis eases, or reverts to the tighter, revenue-driven tariff structures seen elsewhere, is likely to be one of the more consequential regional questions for 2026-2027.

Container Types Most at Risk

Not all maritime equipment is equally exposed to detention and demurrage risks. The nature of the cargo, specialized machinery requirements, and strict regulatory handling mandates heavily dictate how fast daily penalty tiers escalate.

• Reefer containers (Risk Level: Very High) — Mandatory cold-chain power connection requirements and strict timeline constraints make these the most exposure-prone equipment type.
• ISO tank containers (Risk Level: High) — Required cleaning, strict validation, and hazardous cargo protocols extend dwell times and increase penalty exposure.
• High cube containers — 40'HC / 45'HC (Risk Level: Medium–High) — High absolute volume exposure and dimensional clearance constraints at crowded yards compound risk.
• Flat rack containers (Risk Level: High) — Out-of-gauge handling requires specialized terminal stacking footprints, limiting flexibility during congestion peaks.
• Open top containers (Risk Level: Medium) — Top-loading crane scheduling constraints create compounding delays during extreme port backlogs.
• Standard 20' / 40' dry (Risk Level: Medium) — Massive absolute volume exposure creates systemic risk despite lower standard base tariff rates per unit.

What this means for an individual shipper or forwarder

There is no single "average" D&D bill, because exposure depends heavily on trade lane, port, and how disciplined a company's documentation, drayage coordination and freetime tracking are - but the scale of the total market gives a useful reference point. If total global D&D charges run in the tens of billions of dollars annually across roughly 230 million TEU of containerized trade, that implies an average of somewhere in the range of $50-$100 per container moved, once the cost is spread across every box, including the majority that never incur a charge at all. For companies that actually experience D&D - generally a minority of shipments but a persistent one - the real cost concentrates heavily: a mid-sized importer or forwarder moving several hundred containers a year, with even a modest 10-15% incidence rate of delay-related charges averaging $500-$1,500 per affected container, could plausibly be looking at $25,000 to $100,000 or more in annual D&D exposure. For high-volume shippers on congested lanes, that figure can run into the millions.

As carriers continue tightening free time and raising per diem rates faster than underlying freight costs, D&D is shifting from an occasional operational headache into a cost line that boards and finance teams are now expected to forecast, negotiate, and actively manage — through tighter documentation, earlier customs pre-clearance, negotiated extended free time in service contracts, and real-time visibility into last-free-day deadlines.

BlueBox – dedicated to eliminating D&D costs

With our new D&D management and mitigation tools now live, BlueBox is on a mission to help shippers and their forwarders to eliminate these penalties once and for all and enable customers to redeploy the millions saved to investing in their core businesses.

BlueBox receives Vessel Discharge, Gate Out and Empty Return events from the most of the 55 global ocean carriers we track which account for 99% of global container movements. Customers then upload their D&D tariffs – freetime or target alert generation days, penalty amounts and period escalations – directly into the UI on a per port/carrier basis.

From there the automation takes over. Customers can immediately see when any container has hit the free time alert period and may incur D&D penalties via the homepage Control Tower dashboard.

You can then click directly on the small arrow in the top right hand corner and go directly to the shipment tracking page…where the D&D event is shown in red against the port.

This automated process highlights at risk detention and demurrage penalties for any customer using BlueBox for global shipment tracking and enables customers to immediately take urgent corrective action to eliminate D&D penalty risk.

Book a Discovery Call and let’s have a chat about how we can help you to eliminate D&D costs once and for all - https://bluebox-systems.com/demo