The words on your cartage invoice, defined

The charge a carrier levies for keeping its container off-terminal, in your yard or at the packer, beyond free time until you dehire the empty. It is tiered, so the daily rate climbs the longer you hold.

The mirror of detention on the terminal side: the charge for leaving a full container on the wharf beyond free time before you collect it. Same idea, different side of the gate.

One merged pool of free days for both demurrage on the wharf and detention in your yard. Simpler to read, easier to burn through: a delay anywhere eats the same allowance.

The days you get before the meter starts. It is a countdown, and it begins earlier than most people think. Free time keeps shrinking while the tiers behind it climb.

Whether free-time days count weekends and public holidays (calendar) or not (working). Two carriers both offering “7 days” can differ by a long weekend.

When the countdown begins: at vessel discharge, or when the container becomes available for collection. On a congested wharf, that gap is real money.

Charged by the stevedore to the transport operator for landside access, then passed straight through to you. Barely existed a decade ago; now runs to hundreds of dollars a box and rises on its own schedule.

The label under which much of the TAC increase has arrived: a charge framed as recovering terminal infrastructure investment. It lands on the same cartage invoice line.

The depot the shipping line nominates for returning empty containers. A full park that will not take your box keeps the detention clock running, which is a billing problem, not just a parking one.

A small per-box fee empty parks charge to lodge a dehire notification. Small each, meaningful at volume, and it flows into transport operator cost-recovery lines. Wharfa does not yet publish park fees: we have no directly sourced park schedules, and they are excluded from the Index rather than estimated.

The system that allocates truck arrival slots at terminals and parks, with a per-booking fee. Another of the small per-box lines that quietly compound.

Returning the empty container to the park or depot the shipping line nominates. The detention clock runs until dehire is accepted, so a full park that will not take your box is a billing problem.

The per-event terminal charges that sit outside the headline access charge: no-shows, sideloader handling, weight corrections, oversize vehicles. They only hit the jobs that incur them, so they hide in a blended per-container average and can move your real cost well above the headline rise.

Charged when a booked VBS slot is not used, whether the truck arrives outside the window or not at all. Among the larger ancillaries, and one of the few landside charges you can actually control.

A surcharge for servicing a side-loader trailer, which lifts the box itself rather than using terminal equipment. Levied per container on top of the access charge.

Charged when the declared container weight does not match the weight measured at the terminal. Named for the weighing system at some terminals; the fee is for the correction, not the weighing.

Unpacking a container over several days rather than in one hit, common with constrained labour or storage, which risks running past free time into detention.

The date a changed charge applies, as stated in the publisher’s own document. Most carrier changes are announced weeks before this date, which is the lead time Wharfa exists to hand you.

A publisher has signalled a future change without final figures. We log it the day it appears, so the lead time is yours, not theirs.

A change to a published charge, usually a TAC, that a transport operator passes through via a rate-variation letter. The dated source notice is what turns “trust me” into evidence.

A charge levied on transport operators by stevedores or parks, then recovered from cargo owners. The fixed landside pass-through is what a box attracts before it moves a metre.

Every Wharfa value carries a status. Verified has been human-checked against the source capture; machine-read is published pending that check, and labelled honestly.

A quarterly index of published landside charges at Australian container ports: terminal access charges and import detention, weighted and re-priced each quarter from a fixed basket. Based at its inaugural quarter = 100, and currently excludes empty-park fees. A reference indicator, not a price.