Rotterdam demurrage & detention: free time, the clock, and how charges build
How demurrage and detention work at Rotterdam (Netherlands) — 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 Rotterdam
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 Rotterdam
Europe's largest port is highly automated and usually fluid, but inland-leg friction — barge slot congestion at the deepsea terminals, rail disruption on the Rhine corridor — regularly strands import boxes at the terminal past free time. Low-water periods on the Rhine push cargo from barge to truck and create exactly the collection crunches that eat free days.
Rotterdam's scale also means carrier and terminal systems disagree surprisingly often on event timestamps; pull the terminal's own data (not the carrier's summary) before paying any disputed day count.
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 Rotterdam calls — and the retro-audit of your last quarter is free.
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