FMC Demurrage and Detention Billing Rules: What OSRA 2022 Requires on Every Invoice

The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (OSRA 2022) gave the FMC a mandate to address demurrage and detention, the charges levied when containers or equipment are held beyond free time. The Commission’s resulting rule requires that invoices carry specific minimum information and that they be issued, disputed, and resolved within defined timeframes (FMC). An invoice missing required content is contestable on its face.

The rule reframes these charges as an accountability exercise: a billing party must be able to justify the charge with the underlying facts, the timeline, the availability, the free-time calculation, and the billed party has a defined window and basis to dispute it (Federal Register). Both sides now argue from records rather than assertions.

A later court review set aside one provision concerning which party may be billed; the invoice-content and timing requirements are the stable core an importer should build around. As with financial recordkeeping, the enduring lesson is that the party with the better contemporaneous records prevails.

Capture the container timeline yourself. Availability, last-free-day, gate-out, and return events are the facts that confirm or defeat a charge.

Check every invoice against the required content, and dispute within the rule’s window when information is missing.

Keep terminal and carrier records aligned to your own, so a dispute is a comparison, not an investigation.

Treat free-time calculation as an auditable record, not a number to accept.

The 2024 rule specifies the minimum information a demurrage or detention invoice must carry. Under 46 CFR Part 541, each invoice must include: the bill-to party and the appropriate person to be billed; the container or equipment number; the invoice date and invoice number; the appropriate rate and basis for the charge; the amount of free time; the start date and end date of the charge; total charges; and the terms and timing for disputing the invoice (Federal Register, 2024).

The invoice must be issued within 30 days of the last date for which a charge is being billed. An invoice issued late is contestable. Once issued, the billed party has at least 30 days to dispute the charge in writing; the billing party must acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within a reasonable time. Silence is not a resolution.

A separate provision, which was later vacated by a federal court, would have restricted who could be billed to the merchant of record or the entity that contracted for the use of equipment. The invoice-content requirements and timing obligations are the parts of the rule that survived and that importers and brokers should build their dispute procedures around.