Importers and drayage coordinators get surprise demurrage and detention bills because nobody is watching container free-time clocks across carriers

Demurrage and detention bills hit importers and drayage operators because free-time clocks per container and per carrier are tracked manually, if at all, and nobody acts before the meter runs over. Nine large carriers billed nearly nine billion dollars in these fees in a two-year window. The HN thread on container shipping rates spiking after the Hormuz crisis drew heavy operator discussion about how volatile and punishing container ops costs have become. A monitor that pulls gate-in and gate-out events, counts free time per container, alerts at-risk boxes before fees trigger, and assembles the dispute packet when a charge is wrong addresses a margin leak the incumbents only sell to enterprise forwarders.