The facts in order. Four containers reached our warehouse in one morning, two forty-foot and two twenty-foot, booked together through one forwarder. The warehouse manager has said before that our boxes arrive on each other's heels; this time he had a point, and a lively morning.
Two things I want to understand. First, how likely is it that four boxes land together, or does the booking make it happen? Second, I had understood there was free time at the port before demurrage starts, so a box could wait a day or two rather than be trucked to us at once. How is that period worked out, and who decides when a box leaves the terminal? Customs only; the biosecurity side is behaving itself.
Two clocks, Callum, and your warehouse is watching the wrong one. Demurrage is the box sitting on the terminal after its free days are used up: storage, paid to the port. Detention is the line charging you for the box itself, from pull-out until the empty is back at the depot. The trucker can stagger you, one or two a day to match what the floor can unstuff; the ones left behind sit on the port's clock, usually the cheaper one. Free days are on each bill of lading.
I file our inbound and have to ask the beginner's question: when does the free time begin? I had assumed the day the vessel arrives, but a forwarder told me it is the day the box is off the ship and released for collection, which can be a day or two later. And does a weekend count? Ours run in calendar days, so a Friday release eats the weekend before anyone can collect on Monday. If the terminal is holding the box, why is the weekend on our clock?
Four in one morning is the booking, not the weather. One vessel, one consolidated booking, one release: four entries clear the same afternoon and four boxes are available at once, and nobody at the line spreads that for you. Hana, calendar days, and the clock starts at availability, not at berthing. Tomás, I would go further on staggering. Inside the free days the boxes left behind cost nothing; that is what the free days are for. Storage starts when they run out.
