Workflow — Detention & Demurrage Tracking

Reclaim the 30% of D&D charges your team doesn't have time to dispute.

Container event data, terminal billing statements, free-time agreements, weather and operations exception logs → day-by-day reconstruction of free-time eligibility, FMC reasonableness rule analysis, dispute-letter draft to the carrier or terminal. Reclaim the 20–40% of disputable charges large importers leave unreviewed.

Take the AI Assessment Get a Per-Container ROI Model

20–40%

Of disputable D&D charges left unreviewed at large importers

FMC Rule

Reasonableness rule on D&D billing practices

60–85%

Routine review off the analyst desk after AI cutover

What This Replaces

The Logistics Analyst Reconstructing Container Free-Time One at a Time

The work the logistics analyst does on every D&D charge — and the cost of leaving it there.

The labor

D&D tracking and dispute today moves through logistics analysts at $45–$95 per hour fully loaded plus offshore ops support at customs-broker-owned offshore ops (Livingston, Expeditors, Flexport). Per-container reconstruction takes hours when the container event chain spans multiple parties (carrier, terminal, drayage, consignee) and the free-time agreement has carrier-specific exceptions for weather, port operations, or holidays.

The cycle time

Standard D&D dispute prep runs days-to-weeks at the analyst desk, with longer cycles when the dispute requires FMC reasonableness analysis or when carrier responses require multi-round correspondence. Large importers with thousands of containers per year leave 20–40% of disputable charges unreviewed because the analyst economics don't cover the population — disputable charges with smaller dollar exposure get written off rather than reviewed.

The Workflow

Input · Analysis · Output

What goes into D&D tracking, what we do to it, and what shows up in the dispute workflow.

Input

Container events + billing + agreements

Container event data (CTM, AMS, port APIs)
Terminal billing statements
Carrier free-time agreements and amendments
Drayage / chassis / appointment data
Weather and port-operations exception logs
Per-customer billing and chargeback rules
Prior D&D dispute history per carrier and terminal

Analysis

Reconstruct, calculate, dispute

Day-by-day reconstruction of free-time eligibility
Per-event timing reconciliation across parties
Carrier-agreement free-time application
FMC reasonableness rule analysis
Weather / port-ops exception handling
Dispute-letter draft with the basis cited
Confidence score per finding; exceptions to logistics-analyst queue

Output

Dispute into the carrier / terminal

Dispute filed with carrier or terminal
Refund or credit captured
D&D dashboard for ops and finance
Direct via TMS API (MercuryGate, Oracle, etc.)
AP-system integration for credit application
Per-container audit trail with event chain
Recovery dashboard for treasury

Side by Side

D&D Tracking Today vs. With Last Rev

The numbers that matter: cycle time, dispute coverage, recovery rate, and FMC-defensibility.

Dimension	Logistics Analyst Processing	Last Rev D&D Tracking
Cycle time, charge received to dispute filed	Days-to-weeks	Hours per dispute
Dispute population coverage	Bounded by analyst time — 60–80% of disputable charges reviewed	100% of charges reviewed at AI cost
Per-container event reconstruction	Manual cross-reference across CTM, AMS, port data	Day-by-day event chain reconstructed automatically
FMC reasonableness analysis	Manual application, drift on edge cases	Per-charge reasonableness analysis with the rule cited
Weather / port-ops exception handling	Spotty — analyst memory of port disruptions	Auto-applied with the exception event cited
Dispute-letter quality	Templated letters with manual data fill-in	Per-container dispute draft with the event chain and basis cited
Audit log per dispute	Analyst notes, no event-level lineage	Source event data + agreement clause + FMC rule + confidence per finding

How It Works

From D&D Charge to Refund / Credit

Five steps. Every one logged. Every one reversible if your confidence threshold isn't met.

Submission Lands

Terminal billing statement plus container event data (CTM, AMS, port APIs), carrier free-time agreement, drayage / chassis / appointment data, weather and port-operations exception logs.

Extraction & Classification

Day-by-day reconstruction of free-time eligibility. Per-event timing reconciliation across parties. Carrier-agreement free-time application. FMC reasonableness rule analysis. Weather / port-ops exception handling.

Validation Against Free-Time Bar

Findings validated against the carrier free-time agreement and FMC reasonableness rule. Anything below your confidence threshold per finding is routed to a human exception queue — your call which queue, ours or yours.

Push to Dispute Workflow

Dispute letter drafted with the event chain and basis cited. Filed with carrier or terminal directly or via your dispute-management system. D&D dashboard updated for ops and finance.

Audit Log Persisted

Every event reconstruction, free-time application, and FMC reasonableness analysis logged with the source data, model version, and confidence score. FMC-complaint-ready and yours.

Compliance & Defensibility

Built to Meet the Quality Bar Ocean Operations Already Run On

FMC reasonableness rule conformance

Federal Maritime Commission D&D Reasonableness Rule (46 CFR Part 545) tracked. Per-charge reasonableness analysis with the rule cited. FMC enforcement updates flow into the validation engine within days of effective dates.

Carrier-agreement fidelity

Per-carrier free-time agreements (and amendments) indexed and applied per container. Per-port and per-equipment-type free-time variations respected. Audit log records which agreement version applied to each dispute.

FMC complaint defensibility

When a dispute escalates to FMC complaint proceedings, the audit log produces the per-event chain, the agreement clauses cited, and the reasonableness analysis. Cleaner chain of custody than the analyst spreadsheet today.

Customer pricing and lane confidentiality

D&D data references customer pricing, lane structure, and shipment-level information. Deployable in your VPC or our SOC 2 environment. Encryption in transit and at rest; retention policies tied to FMC recordkeeping rules and your customer contracts.

Common Questions

What Importers and 3PLs Ask About D&D Tracking

CargoSmart, project44, and FourKites are visibility platforms that surface container event data. The competitor on this page is the logistics-analyst labor that does the dispute reconstruction and FMC reasonableness analysis on top of that data — typically analysts at $45–$95 per hour fully loaded. We complement your visibility platform and undercut the analyst labor cost, integrate directly into your TMS, and deliver dispute drafts and refund-tracking workflows.

Most large importers and 3PLs keep the analyst team in place during pilot and early production — we route exceptions, complex multi-party disputes, and any case that genuinely requires senior-analyst judgment to the team you already have. Volume to the analyst desk drops 60–85% on routine D&D dispute work once cutover completes. Analyst time shifts to higher-leverage work like contract renegotiation prep or carrier-performance scorecard analysis.

Our pilot success threshold is event-reconstruction and free-time-application accuracy at parity with or above your incumbent analyst process, measured on the same shadow-data sample of historical disputes. Anything below your defined confidence threshold per finding is routed to the analyst review queue — your call which queue, ours or yours.

Per-container AI dispute prep costs are largely fixed regardless of dispute population, so 100% review becomes economically feasible where 60–80% sampling was the only option before. Recovery rates routinely surface materially higher because the disputable charges hidden in the unreviewed 20–40% come out. The audit log records every dispute decision so the recovery is fully traceable.

Weather and port-operations exception events (NOAA storm tracks, port-operation closures, work stoppages, terminal congestion notices) are auto-correlated with container event chains. When a free-time day was lost to a recognized exception event, the dispute draft cites the exception with timestamps and source citations.

Yes — through the documented integration surface each platform supports. MercuryGate via REST APIs; Oracle TMS via Cloud Integration; Blue Yonder TMS via APIs; McLeod LoadMaster via APIs. Container event data ingestion via CargoSmart, project44, FourKites APIs or direct port APIs. Your IT and operations teams review and approve service accounts. We do not require platform-side custom development.

D&D-tracking pilots typically run 6–8 weeks: 1–2 weeks of integration and per-carrier free-time-agreement mapping with the logistics team, 4 weeks of shadow-mode running on real D&D charges with no dispute-system writes, 1–2 weeks of supervised cutover on a constrained scope (one carrier, one trade lane). Production rollout is staged after the pilot meets your accuracy and operations sign-off.

We benchmark against your current per-dispute fully-loaded cost — typically derived from $45–$95 per hour analyst rates translated into per-container economics. Our target is 25–45% of that per-container cost at higher accuracy and faster cycle time. Pricing structures around volume tiers and outcome SLAs (recovery rate), not hourly billable rates.

Two Ways to Start

Take the AI assessment for a structured read on D&D-tracking feasibility. Or talk to us if you already know D&D charges are a recurring line item on your operations P&L.

Self-serve · 8 minutes

Take the AI Assessment

A short structured assessment that maps your monthly D&D charge volume, TMS, and current logistics-analyst arrangement to AI feasibility and ROI.

Talk to a specialist

Get a Per-Container ROI Model

Send us your monthly D&D charge volume, your TMS, and your current logistics-analyst arrangement. We'll come back with a per-container unit-cost comparison and a 6–8 week pilot plan in 5 business days.

Other Workflows

More Logistics & Trade Workflows We Replace

The same approach, applied to the other document-heavy labor lines on your operations and trade-compliance budget.

Freight Bill Audit

Carrier invoices line-by-line audited against contract rates, fuel surcharge, accessorials.

POD Processing

Signed PODs, manifests → OS&D categorization and freight-claim-letter draft.

BOL Processing

BOL extraction → MercuryGate, Oracle TMS, Blue Yonder, Manhattan Active, McLeod LoadMaster.

Hazmat / DG Declaration

Shipper's declaration → 49 CFR / IATA DGR / IMDG validation. Bad paperwork stops before the carrier.