Estimate demurrage exposure for railcars held past free time: (days held − free days) × daily rate × cars. Enter your numbers to see the charge per car, per event, and what it costs in a year if the pattern repeats.
Formula: (days held − free days) × daily rate × cars. Actual tariffs vary by railroad and may use credit/debit day systems that offset early releases against late ones. Treat this as a planning estimate, not a tariff calculation.
Demurrage exposure
$3,000
Chargeable days / car
4
Charge per car
$600
If this happens weekly, per year
$155,880
Demurrage compounds quietly: a day of dwell across a few cars a week is often a five-figure annual leak.
charge = (days held − free days) × daily rate × number of cars
The clock usually starts at placement, or at constructive placement when the railroad has the car ready but your facility can't take it. Free time is set by the serving railroad's tariff (commonly 24–48 hours), and rates escalate on some tariffs the longer cars sit. Credit/debit tariffs let early releases offset late ones within a billing cycle, which is why the same dwell pattern can bill differently across railroads.
Not sure which charge you're actually paying? Our guide to demurrage vs. detention draws the line between the two clocks.
Nobody plans to hold cars. Demurrage accrues in the gaps: the car that arrived Friday afternoon, the switch list nobody reconciled, the bay that wasn't empty when the car was placed. At $150+ per car-day, a few slow cars a week is a five-figure annual leak that never shows up as a line item until the railroad's invoice does. Tracking dwell per car, in real time, is the fix. It's a core feature of Rebulk's railcar management software.
Demurrage is the charge a railroad assesses when railcars are held beyond the free time allowed for loading or unloading. It exists to keep cars, which the railroad or car owner needs back in circulation, from sitting idle at customer facilities.
In the common form: (days held − free days) × the tariff's daily rate, per car. Class I railroads typically allow 1–2 free days from placement (or constructive placement) and charge roughly $150–$200+ per car per day after that. Many tariffs run credit/debit systems where early releases earn credits that offset debits.
When the railroad has your car ready but can't place it because your facility can't receive it (track full, plant down), the car is 'constructively placed', and the demurrage clock usually starts anyway. It's the most common source of surprise demurrage bills.
Rebulk tracks dwell time, status, and release dates for every car on site and flags demurrage events as they accrue, so cars get worked and released before free time expires, and charges that do accrue are visible immediately instead of discovered on the invoice.
Rebulk keeps a dwell clock on every car in your yard, flags demurrage as it accrues, and gives billing a clear, trackable record of every storage day.
