Demurrage and Detention at Port Everglades: Why Most Disputes Are Lost Before They Are Filed

The FMC's May 2024 Final Rule on Demurrage and Detention Billing Requirements changed the dispute math for Port Everglades importers, and most of them are not using it. The rule requires 13 specific data elements on every D&D invoice. It limits the billing window to 30 days from the last fee accrual.

Those two provisions together create a procedural defense that did not exist before OSRA 2022 gave the Federal Maritime Commission statutory authority to act. The problem is not awareness of the rule. The problem is evidence.

A dispute under this framework requires a reconstructed container timeline: when the cargo arrived, when the free time began, when the importer's trucker was turned away at the gate, when the terminal finally made the container available for pickup. Most South Florida freight operations cannot produce that reconstruction because they never captured the data continuously in the first place. They have invoices. They have emails. They do not have a timestamped log of every status change across the port's terminal operating system, the ocean carrier's tracking feed, and their own dispatch records.

That gap is why most disputes are lost before they are filed.

One framing note before going further. Demurrage covers the container sitting at the terminal past free time, and the evidence that matters is terminal availability and hold status. Detention covers the equipment after gate-out, and the evidence that matters is chassis availability, empty return appointment denials, and empty receiving windows at the terminal. The Final Rule applies to both, but the tracking data you need is not the same.

Invoice review at receipt: the 13-element check

The FMC Final Rule, codified at 46 CFR Part 541 and effective May 28, 2024, specifies 13 categories of required minimum information on every demurrage and detention invoice. The list spans the container number, the bill of lading number, the invoice date, the date of allowed free time, the allowed free time in days, the start date of free time, the end date of free time, the port of discharge, the container availability date, the basis for the rate charged, the total amount due, contact information for billing disputes, and a statement that the charges comply with FMC regulations and a defined incentive principle. That last element is not administrative filler. It is the provision that makes the billing contestable.

In practice, invoices coming through Port Everglades from carriers such as MSC, CMA CGM, and Maersk have had mixed compliance with the full set. The elements that most commonly go missing or get fudged are the free time end date, the container availability date, the dispute contact, and the regulatory compliance statement. Some invoices fold multiple containers into a single invoice without per-container breakdowns, which makes the 30-day window calculation ambiguous. An importer who spots a missing element has grounds to dispute the invoice procedurally, before even arguing the underlying facts.

The difficulty is that spotting the missing element requires someone to check the invoice against the 13-element checklist every time, within a short window. A Doral or Medley-based freight forwarder processing roughly 80 to 120 invoices per month, to use a representative mid-sized scale, is not doing that check manually with any consistency.

One operational point the post should not gloss over: the Final Rule sets two separate 30-day windows. The carrier or MTO has 30 days from the date the last fee accrued to issue the invoice. The billed party then has its own 30-day window from the invoice date to file a dispute with the billing party. An importer who reads only the first deadline and misses the second one loses the procedural defense entirely.

Free time and gate availability at the terminal

The substantive dispute, as opposed to the procedural one, comes down to a question of who controlled the container during the period being charged. The FMC's interpretive framework on demurrage and detention, set out in 46 CFR 545.5 (the 2020 Interpretive Rule under the Shipping Act), reflects an incentive principle: demurrage is supposed to incentivize cargo movement, not generate revenue when the importer had no actual ability to retrieve the container.

If the terminal was holding a container in a status that prevented pickup, the demurrage clock should not be running against the importer. Under 46 CFR 545.5, billing for periods of carrier or terminal inaccessibility is treated as an unreasonable practice.

Proving that the terminal was inaccessible on specific dates requires specific records. Port Everglades terminal data, carrier vessel tracking, and port authority gate records are all separate systems. The importer's trucker may have a driver log showing a failed pickup attempt. The container's status in the carrier's tracking system may show "not available" for a three-day window. But assembling those records after the fact, weeks after the charges accrued, is an investigative project. Most importers lack the staff to do it, and most freight brokers do not offer it as a service.

The result is that even when the underlying facts favor the importer, the dispute fails because the evidentiary package cannot be assembled in time or at sufficient detail.

Container tracking between vessel arrival and gate-out

I have come to believe the infrastructure problem here is the gap between continuous data capture and retrospective assembly. An operation that checks container status once a day, or relies on a carrier portal that only stores the last known status, is always going to be reconstructing timelines from fragments.

An agent workflow that polls carrier APIs, terminal appointment systems, and vessel feeds at short intervals (every two to four hours is achievable with current tooling) and writes each status change to a structured log produces a complete, timestamped chain of custody for the container from vessel arrival through gate-out. That log is the evidentiary foundation for a winnable dispute.

The data points that matter for a Port Everglades dispute include:

• Vessel arrival and berthing time from port authority and AIS feeds (PortVision or MarineTraffic are common sources)
• Container discharge confirmation from the carrier
• First available date as reported by the terminal or carrier
• Any holds (CBP, USDA, or terminal holds)
• Gate availability and appointment status changes (eModal or Voyage Control where deployed)
• Trucker appointment system records showing attempted and failed pickups

A realistic note on access. Maersk exposes a documented public Track and Trace API through GCSS. MSC's myMSC and CMA CGM's eBusiness portals are more restricted and typically require commercial agreements for API access at the volume needed for continuous polling. The terminal-side data is harder still: container-level availability and hold status sit with the terminal operators at Port Everglades (Florida International Terminal, Mediterranean Shipping Terminal, Crowley, King Ocean), not with Broward County's port authority. The port authority publishes vessel schedules and berth assignments. The hold and gate-status data that wins a dispute is usually accessible only through the carrier feed, the trucker's appointment portal, or scraped status from terminal systems where direct API access is not offered. The data exists. The question is whether the operator's stack is capturing it continuously and from the right source.

The 30-day billing window as a litigation tool

The 30-day billing window in the FMC Final Rule is underused as a defense. The rule requires that invoices be issued within 30 days of the date the last fee accrued. An invoice issued on day 31 or later is facially non-compliant. An importer with a timestamped record of when fees stopped accruing, matched against the invoice date, can contest the bill on procedural grounds without litigating the underlying facts at all.

This is a genuinely useful defense, but it requires knowing the exact date the last fee accrued. That date is in the carrier's system. It is also in a continuous tracking log if the importer's agent was polling the right fields. Without that log, the importer is asking the carrier to confirm the date the carrier used to calculate its own invoice, which is not a neutral request.

The FMC's small claims and charge complaint dockets show a steady flow of D&D billing proceedings since the Final Rule took effect, and the agency's enforcement posture treats the 13-element and 30-day requirements as binding rather than aspirational. An importer at Port Everglades who builds a dispute against the regulatory text in 46 CFR Part 541 and the interpretive standard in 46 CFR 545.5 has a different posture in a carrier negotiation than one who is simply objecting to the amount.

Commercial retaliation and the limits of filing

There is a counterargument operators need to take seriously before they file. Carriers and MTOs run well-funded compliance teams, and an importer running 5 to 20 containers per month who files an FMC complaint can face commercial consequences: worse service terms at renewal, deprioritized bookings, or non-renewal of the service contract. The recoverable D&D amount on a single dispute can be smaller than the cost of the soured relationship.

The way mid-sized importers manage this is mostly indirect. NVOCC intermediation puts the dispute one step removed from the importer's direct relationship with the underlying carrier. Group complaints filed through trade associations distribute the relationship cost. The 13-element procedural challenge, raised at the carrier level before any FMC filing, often resolves the invoice without triggering a docket entry at all. Filing with the FMC is the last lever, not the first.

Dispute filing infrastructure at the importer level

The FMC's dispute process under the new framework allows shippers to file complaints directly. The process is not inherently complex, but it requires organized documentation. A complaint that arrives with a complete container timeline, a copy of the invoice annotated against the 13-element checklist, and a log showing dates of inaccessibility is a complaint that can be evaluated on its merits. A complaint that arrives with a stack of emails and a general assertion that "the charges seem wrong" does not go anywhere.

South Florida importers, particularly mid-sized operations in Miami-Dade and Broward running five to twenty containers per month through Port Everglades, are in a position to build this infrastructure at reasonable cost. The agent tooling required to poll carrier APIs, write status logs to a structured database, and flag invoice anomalies against the 13-element checklist is not enterprise-scale software. It is a workflow that can run on existing automation infrastructure, log to something as accessible as a Postgres table or a well-structured Airtable base, and surface alerts when an invoice arrives with a missing element or a date that falls outside the 30-day window.

On the financial side, an order-of-magnitude estimate: at observed Port Everglades D&D rates of roughly $200 to $400 per container per day after free time, a 5 to 20 container per month operation that successfully challenges procedurally non-compliant invoices typically sees recoverable amounts in the low four figures to low five figures per month. That is the number worth bringing to a CFO conversation about whether the tracking infrastructure pays for itself.

The alignment is straightforward: the carrier gets paid faster on legitimate charges because disputes resolve on clear records, and the importer recovers on illegitimate charges that would otherwise go unpaid because the effort to dispute them exceeded the amount at stake.

Four Questions to Ask Before You Trust a Vendor's D&D Dispute Solution

If a freight technology vendor or customs broker is selling you a D&D dispute management service tied to the FMC's new framework, these are the questions worth pressing on before you sign anything:

First, what is the polling frequency for container status updates, and how is that data stored? A solution that checks carrier portals once a day and stores only the current status is not a continuous log. It is a snapshot tool. Ask to see a sample log entry with timestamps.

Second, does the system capture terminal-side availability status separately from carrier-side tracking? Florida International Terminal's gate status and MSC's customer-facing tracking portal are not the same feed. A container can show "available" on the carrier portal and "on hold" in the terminal system simultaneously. Ask which feeds the vendor actually connects to and whether they cover the specific terminal handling your cargo.

Third, can the system produce an annotated invoice comparison against the 13-element checklist in 46 CFR Part 541 automatically, and does it flag 30-day window violations on receipt for both the issuance window and the importer's own dispute deadline? If the answer is "our team reviews it," ask how many invoices per week that team processes and what their average review time is.

Fourth, what does a completed dispute package look like, and has the vendor actually filed one through the FMC's complaint process or resolved one at the carrier level? A vendor who has built the tooling but never run a complaint through to resolution does not know what documentation actually moves the needle. Ask for a redacted example.

The FMC gave importers a real procedural defense in May 2024. The operators who use it are the ones whose infrastructure was already capturing the data. The ones who are not using it are losing recoverable money, at Port Everglades, on invoices that arrive every month.