Visibility isn't a dashboard aesthetic. At Indian ports it is a line item: every day a discharged container sits unnoticed past free time, the meter runs in dollars — and the meter escalates.
Know the meter: how D&D works at Indian ports
Demurrage bills the container sitting inside the terminal or CFS past free time; detention bills you for holding the line's box outside the port after pickup. In India they run in parallel with separate clocks — and terminal ground rent stacks on top in its own daily slabs.
| Window | Typical charge (40ft dry) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free time | 0 | Commonly 3–7 combined free days; negotiable to 10–21 for contract accounts |
| Days 1–4 after free time | ~$50–100 / day | Plus CFS ground rent in escalating ₹ slabs |
| Next slab | ~$75–120 / day | Slabs compound quickly across a multi-container shipment |
| Beyond ~10–14 days | ~$100–200+ / day | Reefers run 1.5–2× dry rates, plus plug-in charges |
The alert workflow that recovers the money
- 01Live ETA feeds trigger your broker to file the advance Bill of Entry before the vessel berths — the clearance clock starts before the free-time clock.
- 02Discharge alerts fire the minute the container hits the quay, alerting the drayage driver and the duty-payment workflow simultaneously.
- 03Last-free-day dashboards rank every box in the fleet by hours of free time remaining, so exceptions get attention before they bill.
- 04Empty-return tracking closes the detention clock — the most commonly forgotten meter of the four.
- 05Dwell analytics by port and carrier arm your next free-time negotiation with evidence instead of anecdotes.
From cost saving to competitive advantage
Once the alert workflow exists, the same data compounds: customer-facing ETAs your sales team can promise against, exception management that re-routes around a disrupted lane in hours, and audit-grade milestone trails for every shipment. The companies treating visibility as a finance tool — not a screen — are the ones quoting tighter landed costs than their competitors and keeping the difference.