The last free day, or LFD, is the final day a container can stay at the terminal, or keep the carrier’s equipment, without demurrage or detention charges. It is calculated by adding the free time from the tariff or contract to the trigger event, usually discharge or gate-out.
LFD is the date operations teams actually plan around: drayage is booked to collect the box on or before it, and empty returns are scheduled against the detention equivalent. Terminals and carriers may publish an LFD per container in their portals, and the date can move if free time is extended, a hold blocks pick-up, or the tariff counts working days.
A container that is not available for pick-up, for example under a customs hold or buried in a closed yard section, may still be accruing time. Whether such days are chargeable, or can be disputed, depends on the tariff and local practice.
Tracking turns LFD from a portal lookup into an alarm. TrackingMCP derives the days remaining from the discharge event and published free time, so a container approaching its LFD stands out before the charge starts. That matters most at congested gateways; see the port pages for Los Angeles or New York for current dwell context.
Free days, daily rates, and billing rules vary by carrier, terminal, port, and contract. Treat this page as orientation and confirm specifics against your own agreement and the applicable tariff before acting on an invoice.
The last free day, or LFD, is the final day a container can stay at the terminal, or keep the carrier’s equipment, without demurrage or detention charges. It is calculated by adding the free time from the tariff or contract to the trigger event, usually discharge or gate-out.
It can. Extensions, tariff rules on weekends and holidays, retroactive free-time agreements, and holds that make a container unavailable can all shift the effective LFD. Treat any published LFD as current best knowledge, not a fixed promise.
The applicable charge starts accruing per day, demurrage inside the terminal or detention outside it, usually from the day after LFD and often at rates that climb in tiers.
Check free days by carrier →
Track a container’s discharge and pick-up →
More in Charges & free time: Demurrage · Detention · Demurrage & detention · Demurrage vs detention vs storage · Free time · Per diem · Terminal handling charge (THC) · General rate increase (GRI) · Peak season surcharge (PSS) · Bunker adjustment factor (BAF) · Currency adjustment factor (CAF) · War risk surcharge (WRS) · Browse all 106 terms →