Northeast Freight Time one clock, four readings

Who Gets Billed Now

This is not legal advice. Ocean billing is governed by the Shipping Act and a real dispute needs counsel who handles it. For a software-oriented reference on recorded work time and accountability, remote workforce management software.

Between May 2024 and September 2025 there was a federal answer to the question of who may be invoiced for ocean demurrage and detention. There is no longer one, and most contracts written during that period assumed the regulation would keep providing it. For broader freight and commercial context, see FleetOwner.

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

What the rule said

46 CFR 541.4 limited demurrage and detention invoices to two parties: the person for whose account the billing party provided ocean transportation or storage and who contracted with the billing party, or the consignee.

The intent was specific — to stop carriers billing motor carriers who never contracted with them, since a drayage company cannot control how long a cargo owner takes to unload. The Commission issued a correction in May 2024 making it explicit that motor carriers could not be billed under any circumstance.

What happened

The D.C. Circuit decided World Shipping Council v. FMC on 23 September 2025 and vacated 541.4.

The reasoning was internal inconsistency rather than fairness: the rule's organising principle was contractual privity with the ocean carrier, yet it permitted billing a consignee who may have no privity at all, while barring motor carriers entirely. The court found the Commission had not explained that.

The FMC removed the section from the Code of Federal Regulations. Everything else in Part 541 survived — invoice content, the thirty-day issuance window, the thirty-day dispute window, and the loss of payment obligation for non-compliance.

What that means in practice

The billing-party question moved from regulation to contract.

One legal assessment described the result plainly: the vacatur leaves a regulatory gap that invites aggressive and inconsistent billing practices. That is not alarmism — it is a description of what happens when a default disappears and nothing replaces it.

Motor carriers can now receive these invoices again. Whether they should, and whether they are obliged to pay, is a contract question, and drayage contracts written in 2024 and 2025 frequently do not address it because the regulation did.

What to put in agreements now

For anyone renewing an ocean carrier, NVOCC or drayage agreement.

Explicit billing-party language. Who is invoiced for demurrage. Who is invoiced for detention. These can differ and frequently should.

Handoff points. Where responsibility transfers between parties in the chain, and what happens to charges accruing across the handoff.

A pass-through rule. Whether a party receiving a charge may pass it on, to whom, and within what period.

And a challenge mechanism. Who disputes a charge when the party billed is not the party who caused the delay — the exact scenario 541.4 existed to prevent.

For drayage operators specifically

The party most exposed by the change, since the protection was written for them.

Do not assume the old position holds. A carrier or NVOCC may now invoice you, and "the FMC prohibits this" is no longer accurate.

Get the billing-party term in writing before the next contract cycle. It is the single highest-value clause available to you right now, and the other side may not yet have thought about it.

And keep the evidence that shows the delay was not yours — appointment attempts, terminal availability, congestion notices. The merits dispute now matters more than it did, because the categorical protection is gone.

The part that did not change

Worth ending here, because it is the stronger lever and it gets forgotten in discussion of the vacatur.

An invoice missing required content, or issued outside thirty days, still removes the obligation to pay as issued. That applies regardless of who is billed.

So the first question on any ocean charge is still not should this be addressed to me but is this invoice properly issued — and that question is answerable in a minute without any evidence about what happened.

The short version