What Port Houston's Import Dwell Fee Costs, and Which Containers to Pull First

Port Houston charges a Sustained Import Dwell Fee of $48.53 per day on a loaded import container, beginning the eighth day after free time expires, and it is charged on top of ocean-carrier demurrage (Port of Houston Tariff No. 14, effective April 1, 2026). For a Houston-area importer, distributor, or 3PL with a dozen boxes coming off one vessel, the useful question is not how to make that fee disappear. It is which containers to pull first, and how to see the clock on each one before it crosses the line.

This article lays out how the Port Houston dwell clock actually runs, a worked dollar example for one box, a simple order for deciding which containers to pull first, and what a person on your team still has to own regardless of what software you buy.

How the Port Houston dwell clock actually runs

Three separate charges stack on a loaded import box sitting at Barbours Cut or Bayport, and they do not start on the same day.

See how Clairvance helps logistics and import teams put this to work

• Free time: a loaded import container gets seven days free, or ten days if the unit requires a U.S. Customs examination and/or USDA inspection. The clock begins at the first 6:00 a.m. after the box is received.
• Demurrage: after free time expires, a container 40 feet or longer is charged $71.55 per day (20-foot boxes are $35.79), including days when the gates are closed. Demurrage is credited against the steamship line's account, so you usually see it as a pass-through on the line's invoice.
• Sustained Import Dwell Fee: commencing on the eighth day after free time expires, the same box is charged another $48.53 per day. Unlike demurrage, the cargo owner and its authorized agent are jointly and severally liable, and the accrued fee must be paid before the container leaves the terminal gate.

There is also an Excessive Import Dwell Fee the port can switch on with thirty days' public notice, in effect for at least sixty days, that replaces the sustained fee with a steeper tiered schedule: $53.92 per day for the first three days after free time, rising to $80.88, then $107.83, and $161.75 per day once a box is fourteen or more days past free time. It is a surge tool for congestion, not a charge that is always live, so confirm whether one is in effect before you model it.

One relief valve is written into the tariff: if the port cannot provide container services for twenty-four consecutive hours or more, the cargo owner can claim a one-day credit per outage, provided the application names the container number, the date, and the type of occurrence and is filed within six months.

A worked dwell-clock example for one box

Take a single 40-foot loaded import container with the standard seven-day free time, pulled on its eighteenth day on the terminal. This is an illustrative calculation using the published tariff rates and a standard seven-day free time; your carrier's demurrage terms, a box needing a customs exam, or an active Excessive Import Dwell Fee would change the numbers.

• Days 1–7: free.
• Days 8–18: demurrage runs for eleven days at $71.55, or $787.05, billed through the steamship line.
• Days 15–18: the Sustained Import Dwell Fee adds four days at $48.53, or $194.12 — and that $194.12 is your company's own liability, payable before the box leaves the gate.

The box costs $981.17 in port charges, and the part you are directly on the hook for climbs the longer it sits. The point of the number is the shape, not the cents: a box that is still inside free time costs nothing, a box one week past free time burns $71.55 a day, and a box eight days past free time burns $120.08 a day. That gap is what should drive the pickup order.

Which containers to pull first

When chassis, appointments, and dock doors are the constraint, rank the boxes on the ground by how close each one is to the $48.53 jump and how fast it burns once it gets there. This pull-first order is a decision aid, not a promise that a correctly assessed fee can be avoided; it only changes which boxes you clear first when chassis, appointments, and warehouse slots are the limit.

A workable order for a dispatcher or import desk:

1. Anything already past day 14 (eight or more days after a seven-day free time). These are burning demurrage plus the dwell fee today; every day of delay is about $120 on a 40-foot box.
2. Boxes that cross the dwell threshold in the next day or two. Count forward from receipt: a box on day 13 becomes a dwell-fee box tomorrow. Clearing it now avoids the step-up entirely.
3. Reefers and high-value or 40-foot-plus boxes over smaller dry boxes at the same age, because a refrigerated unit also burns power and starts with only four days of free time, and a larger box carries the higher demurrage rate.
4. Everything still inside free time, last — unless a warehouse or appointment window makes it cheaper to move it today.

This is triage, not avoidance. If a box is genuinely stuck on a customs hold, moving it up the list will not clear it; that is an upstream problem covered in our companion piece, Before a Truck Rolls to Port Houston, What Has to Clear on the Container?

What a person still owns

Software earns its place here by keeping an accurate clock on every box and sorting the pull list, but only if it is fed the right inputs: the vessel receipt time, the free-time terms for both the carrier and the port, the current hold and release status, chassis availability, and a booked appointment. At Port Houston every truck move through a container terminal needs Express Pass, a mandatory appointment that the trucking company sets up through the Lynx portal before arrival; the terminal does not schedule your pickup for you.

So a person on your team still has to:

• Book or confirm the Express Pass appointment, and chase a chassis when the daily chassis report shows a shortage.
• Decide, box by box, whether to transload or run a direct move when the warehouse is full.
• File the twenty-four-hour outage credit within the six-month window, with the container number and date, rather than letting it lapse.
• Own the exception when a box is held: because the dwell-fee liability is yours, not the carrier's, the escalation path has to end with someone on your side who can act.

An AI or a dashboard can tell you a box turns into a $120-a-day problem on Thursday. It cannot book the chassis, win the appointment slot, or decide that this load is worth a same-day truck. Keep those decisions with a named owner and let the tool do the counting.

Sources

• Port of Houston Authority Tariff No. 14 (effective April 1, 2026) — Subrule 093A, Sustained and Excessive Import Dwell Fees ($48.53 per day from the eighth day after free time; tiered excessive fee; cargo-owner liability; outage credit), and Subrule 093, free time and demurrage rates
• Port Houston — Container Terminal Gate Information (Express Pass mandatory appointment via the Lynx portal)