Detention and demurrage charges can quietly eat into your margins, often triggered by delays, miscommunication, or a lack of visibility into container movements. They’re frustrating, avoidable and surprisingly common.
But staying on schedule isn’t enough. Reducing D&D risk means having the right data at your fingertips, streamlining team coordination, and catching issues before they turn into costly surprises.
In this article, we’ll share the key strategies smart shippers use to stay ahead of detention and demurrage and take control of their costs.
One of the most effective ways to avoid D&D charges is to monitor your free time usage closely. With dozens or even hundreds of containers moving globally, tracking them manually isn’t scalable.
With a centralized D&D dashboard you can easily:
- Monitor free time consumption for each container, across all carriers
- View D&D and storage costs based on your own contractual rates
- Use clear color-coded statuses to prioritize action
- Filter containers by origin, destination, carrier, or booking number
- Manage pooled or unassigned containers directly in the platform
With this kind of visibility, operations teams can act before charges apply.
Even the most experienced teams can miss a deadline if there’s no warning. To stay ahead of D&D charges, it’s critical to be alerted at the right moment, before costs start accumulating. Make sure your team gets notified when:
- A container is approaching the end of its free time
- Unexpected delays or schedule changes occur
- A deviation is logged that could lead to additional costs
Staying informed in real time gives you the chance to act early—and avoid penalties altogether.
When carriers invoice surcharges, verifying their accuracy and checking responsibility is crucial to avoid unnecessary costs. To do so, you need the right data to prove what happened. Time-stamped records play a key role here, providing the evidence needed to support every charge. That’s why collecting evidence and tracking deviations should be integral to your D&D management strategy.
An Ocean Freight Software like BuyCo automatically records:
- Container milestones from empty pickup to return
- Data from terminals, trucking providers, and inland bookings
- Deviations logged by your team or external partners.
With this comprehensive data, you gain full visibility into each shipment’s history. This transparency not only helps you pinpoint the source of charges but also allows you to hold the right party accountable for any discrepancies. The result? Significant potential savings, as you can refute inappropriate charges.
D&D charges often fall between departments. Operations handles container movement; Finance handles invoices. Without shared visibility, the invoicing team is left to spend hours manually verifying invoice accuracy, increasing the risk of costly errors.
To bridge this gap, consider a tool that enables you to:
- Pre-invoice based on your contracted rates and deviations:
calculate freight costs and D&D charges ahead of time, using your carriers’ rate agreements and any recorded deviations. This gives you a clear view of what should be billed before the invoice arrives.
- Run a smarter freight audit with automatic invoice checks:
when invoices are received, instantly compare them with your internal pre-calculations to flag discrepancies and avoid paying for anything unexpected.
- Let your Finance team focus only on claims:
with fewer manual checks and clearer data, your finance team can spend less time verifying invoices and more time resolving only the cases that truly need attention, saving both time and money.
This not only prevents overpayment but also speeds up dispute resolution.
Avoiding D&D fees isn’t just about reacting fast: it’s about spotting the patterns behind the problem.
By looking at trends across your shipments, you can uncover:
- Which carriers consistently generate the most D&D costs
- Which ports are prone to delays or recurring issues
- The most common deviations behind your surcharges
- Tracing the root cause and responsibility for delays
With these insights, you're no longer just fighting fires. You can make smarter planning decisions avoiding critical POD / POD, re-negotiate carrier contracts based on their performance, and fix the root causes before they impact your bottom line.
Detention and demurrage charges aren’t just a cost of doing business. They’re often the result of avoidable blind spots in container tracking, coordination, and communication. By improving visibility and keeping better records, shippers can stay one step ahead.
With BuyCo's platform, you can take full control over D&D exposure. With real-time tracking of free time, automated alerts, detailed milestone records, and collaborative features for dispute management, your teams gain the visibility needed to anticipate costs, challenge discrepancies, and achieve significant savings in both time and money.
Ready to take control of your D&D costs?.
👉 Book a personalized demo and see how BuyCo can reduce your Detention and Demurrage Charges.