Felixstowe demurrage & detention: free time, the clock, and how charges build
How demurrage and detention work at Felixstowe (UK) — when the clock starts, typical free-time ranges, the local factors that eat your free days, and how to avoid or dispute the charges.
How the clock works at Felixstowe
The mechanics are the same everywhere: demurrage runs while your container sits inside the terminal after free time expires (clock starts at container discharge from the vessel, stops at gate-out), and detention runs while you hold the carrier's container outside the terminal (gate-out until empty return). The free time is set by your carrier contract — or, if you haven't negotiated one, by the carrier's standard tariff, which is always worse.
Free time is typically in the range of 3–7 calendar days for demurrage and a similar band for detention, but it is carrier- and contract-specific — the single most common billing error worldwide is the negotiated free time simply not being applied to the invoice.
What eats free time at Felixstowe
The UK's biggest container port concentrates UK import risk in one place: haulage capacity is the binding constraint, and vehicle booking system (VBS) slot shortages in peak weeks mean a cleared box can still sit — those are precisely the days to document, because charging for days when no collection slot existed is challengeable.
UK customs examinations (including Border Force holds) stop everything while the clock runs; the examination notice and release timestamps are your dispute evidence. Industrial action at UK ports has historically produced closure days that many contracts exclude from the count — check yours.
Avoiding and disputing charges
Book trucking before the vessel arrives, pre-clear customs where the regime allows it, and return empties to the depot the carrier actually nominates (a wrong-depot return can keep the detention clock running). When a charge lands anyway: pull the terminal timestamps, check them against the invoice's clock start, check your contractual free time was applied, and dispute inside the invoice's dispute window with the corrected calculation.
Marevo does this automatically for every invoice — including Felixstowe calls — and the retro-audit of your last quarter is free.
Frequently asked
Can I get demurrage back for days Felixstowe had no haulage slots?
If you can evidence that collection was impossible — VBS screenshots, booking refusals — days are disputable on reasonableness and, in many contracts, on the exclusions clause. Document in real time; reconstructing it later is much harder.
Find out what your last quarter owes you
Marevo reads your invoices against your contracts and the terminal data, drafts the disputes, and is paid mostly from what actually comes back. The audit itself is free.
Claim the free audit