Northeast Freight Time one clock, four readings

The Thirty-Day Windows

This is not legal advice. It is a practitioner's summary of a federal rule and of ordinary contract practice, and a real dispute deserves counsel. For a software-oriented reference on recorded work time and accountability, stealth monitoring software.

On the ocean side there are two clocks. Missing either one changes the outcome regardless of who is right about the underlying facts. For broader freight and commercial context, see American Trucking Associations.

Reviewed August 9, 2026. Ocean rules from 46 CFR Part 541; road practice is contractual.

The two clocks

Issuance: thirty days. Under the FMC rule, billing parties must issue demurrage and detention invoices within thirty days. An invoice outside that window, or one missing required content, eliminates the billed party's obligation to pay as issued.

Dispute: thirty days. If the invoice is compliant and you believe the charge is wrong on the merits, a written request for mitigation, refund or waiver goes in within thirty days.

These are different arguments. The first says the invoice is not properly issued. The second says the charge is wrong. Take them in that order, because the first requires no evidence about what happened.

Order of operations

One. Check compliance before checking the merits. Does the invoice show which container, what period including when free time actually ended, the applicable per-diem rate tied to a tariff or contract provision, and how the total was calculated? A missing element is a basis for non-payment pending correction, and it costs a minute to establish.

Two. Check the issuance date against the charge period.

Three. Then, and only then, argue the facts. Terminal availability, appointment confirmations, congestion notices — the records that support a merits case, and which have to have been kept at the time.

Doing this in reverse is common and expensive: people spend a week assembling a merits argument for an invoice that was never enforceable.

What to keep, from the beginning

The merits dispute needs records that cannot be created afterwards.

Terminal availability. When the container actually became available for pickup, which frequently differs from discharge during congestion — and that difference is often the entire charge.

Appointment confirmations. Evidence you tried.

Congestion notices. Carrier or terminal advisories about extended dwell.

And your own attempts, dated. Messages, portal screenshots, refused appointments.

Keep these routinely for high-volume lanes rather than assembling them per dispute. By the time an invoice arrives, the availability record you need may no longer be retrievable.

Writing the dispute

In writing, inside the window, citing the provision. Not a phone call.

State which ground you are on — non-compliant invoice, or merits — and do not blur them. Mixing weakens both.

Attach the evidence rather than describing it.

And say what you are asking for: correction and reissue, mitigation, refund, or waiver. A dispute without a requested remedy invites a reply that resolves nothing.

The road side

There is no equivalent rule. Whatever windows exist are contractual, and many rate confirmations have none — which means a carrier can invoice months later and a receiver has no defined dispute period.

Both sides benefit from fixing that, and it is a cheap term to agree.

Submission window for the carrier. Thirty days is reasonable and a well-run operation meets it anyway.

Dispute window for the receiver. Thirty days from receipt, in writing, with a reason.

And a response obligation. A dispute that is never answered is not resolved, and the silence usually favours whoever is holding the money.

The FMC's structure is a sensible template even where it does not apply — the reason it works is that it makes the invoice self-verifying and puts a clock on both sides, neither of which is unique to ocean freight.

The habit that makes both clocks work

Diarise on receipt. Two dates in a calendar, per invoice: the compliance check today, the dispute deadline in thirty days.

Both windows exist to protect the billed party and both are forfeited by inattention. Fewer than half of detention invoices are paid, which means a great deal of this correspondence is happening — and a meaningful share of it is happening after a deadline has already passed.

The short version