How LatAm Importers Win Ocean Demurrage & Detention Disputes

Ocean demurrage and detention is the single largest pool of disputable charges in containerized trade, and most importers pay it without ever checking whether they actually owe it.

Between April 2020 and March 2025, nine ocean carriers alone collected roughly $15.4 billion in demurrage and detention charges, according to the quarterly data those carriers file with the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission.¹ Over the 2020 to 2022 window, the same carriers billed about $8.9 billion and collected roughly $6.9 billion.

~$15.4B

Collected in D&D by nine carriers, Apr 2020 to Mar 2025

+85%

Q4 2024 peak vs. the Q2 2020 baseline

-24%

Q1 2025 billings, quarter over quarter

30

Days a U.S. invoice has to be issued, or it is unenforceable

Billing and collection peaked in Q4 2024, about 85% above the Q2 2020 baseline, before Q1 2025 saw billings fall 24% and collections 19% quarter over quarter. The market cooled. The exposure did not go away.

The point is not that D&D is expensive. It is that a large share of it is disputable, and since 2024, a meaningful portion of it is legally unenforceable.

What D&D actually is

Demurrage accrues when a loaded container sits at the terminal past its free time. Detention accrues when you hold the carrier's equipment, the container and chassis, outside the terminal too long. Free time typically runs three to seven days after discharge depending on the carrier's tariff and the terminal. After that, the charge accrues daily.

The trap is that most of what triggers D&D sits outside the importer's control: terminal congestion, a missing chassis, no gate appointment, a customs hold, a closed port. Regulators have already sided with shippers on exactly that point. The FMC has found that charging per-diem while a port was closed and equipment could not physically be returned was unjust and unreasonable.

The 2024 rule changed the leverage

Under the FMC's Demurrage and Detention Billing Requirements rule (46 CFR Part 541), in effect since 28 May 2024, a D&D invoice is only enforceable if it is built correctly. The rule sets out the minimum information every invoice must carry and a 30-day issuance deadline. Miss either, and the consequence is blunt: failure to include the required information eliminates any obligation of the billed party to pay the charge.²

On the deadline itself: vessel-operating carriers and marine terminal operators must invoice within 30 calendar days of when the charge was last incurred. An NVOCC passing a charge through has 30 calendar days from the issuance date of the invoice it received.³

One update worth knowing. On 23 September 2025, the D.C. Circuit decided World Shipping Council v. FMC and set aside one provision, §541.4, which governed who may be billed. The rest of Part 541 survives intact, including the invoice-content requirements and the 30-day issuance deadline. The FMC confirmed as much, and the conforming amendment removing §541.4 was published in December 2025.⁴ The “no valid invoice, no obligation” leverage still stands. What you can no longer assume is that a given party is off-limits as a billing target.

Where this applies for LatAm importers

Precision matters here, because the FMC rule is U.S. law. It governs invoices for cargo moving to or from U.S. ports. If you import through a U.S. gateway, Miami or Houston or a transload before onward carriage south, or you trade directly on U.S. lanes, the federal “no compliant invoice, no obligation” rule is yours to use directly.

For direct lanes into LatAm ports, Asia to Callao, Europe to Cartagena, intra-regional moves, the FMC invoice rule does not govern the charge. The charge is still contestable, and it is won the same way: against the carrier's published tariff and your service contract's free-time terms, and on the principle that D&D cannot fairly accrue during periods when you were physically unable to return the box. The battle is always the same one. Prove, with documented milestones, when free time truly started and stopped, and why the delay was not yours to own.

What makes a D&D invoice disputable

These are the recurring, winnable conditions we see in audit:

• Late or incomplete invoice (U.S. lanes). Missing required data, or issued more than 30 days after the charge was last incurred.
• Billed to the wrong party. You were neither the contracting party nor the consignee.
• Free time miscounted. A wrong discharge or return date silently resets the clock.
• Days charged during an impossibility. A port closure, a congestion event, a chassis or equipment shortage you could not overcome.
• Double-charged days. Demurrage and terminal storage overlapping on the same dates.
• Rate above entitlement. A per-diem applied above the carrier's published tariff or your negotiated contract.

Every one of these is provable with the right evidence, which is where documented terminal and vessel data does the heavy lifting: corroborating when a container was actually discharged, when the terminal was gridlocked, and when equipment return was genuinely possible.

What to do before the next invoice lands

1. Timestamp everything. Discharge, gate-out, gate-in, empty return. Milestone data is the evidence base for every argument above.
2. Keep free-time terms per contract, not from memory. Free time varies by carrier, lane, and equipment type, and it is the number most often miscounted.
3. Log the disruptions as they happen. A port closure notice or a terminal congestion advisory is far harder to source three months later.
4. Diary the invoice date. On U.S. lanes, note when the charge was last incurred so a late invoice is obvious on arrival.
5. File inside the window. Mitigation, refund, and waiver requests have a clock. A valid dispute filed late is still a lost dispute.

How Trazai handles it

We audit every ocean D&D invoice against the FMC billing requirements, the carrier's tariff, and your contract's free-time terms, and we flag the ones that do not hold up. For each, we quantify what is disputable, assemble the milestone evidence, and file the dispute letter for you.

You pay on a success-fee basis, only from what we actually recover or cancel. Forward the invoice, a WhatsApp message is enough, and get a dispute-ready flag back.

The default move on a D&D charge should not be to pay it to release your cargo and move on. On $15.4 billion in charges, “pay first, ask never” is the most expensive habit in the import business.