The proposals hope to enforce the carriage of trade and excessive penalties U.S. importers are being charged by foreign carriers.
Ag letter is the latest in a series of urgent pleas to stop the denial of trade and increased demurrage costs.
Ocean carrier Maersk says it is “working closely with the Agriculture Transportation Coalition and local trucking associations to address their concerns of equipment availability and detention and demurrage issues.”
The Agriculture Transportation Coalition is grateful to the Federal Maritime Commission for its support of American shippers.
The Agriculture Transportation Coalition, together with TradeLanes, surveys hundreds of American shippers about the cost to their bottom lines of uncommunicated earliest return dates from ocean carriers.
The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission wants to learn the extent of allegations that ocean carriers are targeting noncontracted service providers for freight payment.
The inability of ocean carriers to timely inform shippers of schedule changes results in costly logistics disruptions and potential for lost international sales.
For years, exporters and importers have been frustrated by the former U.S. Customs and Border Protection process to withhold their names and addresses in manifest data from the public.
Leasing companies say a neutral chassis pool lacks incentive to invest the tens of millions of dollars each year to maintain viable chassis equipment.
Quick action sets the bar for terminal operators across the country, says Agriculture Transportation Coalition chief
Shippers and forwarders will be cautious with how much cargo they commit to the ocean container carriers this contract season, industry experts say.
The smallest of the standardized ocean containers in the global fleet remains ideal for dense, heavy agricultural goods, forest products, and machinery shipments.
Container equipment shortage exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic stresses upper-Midwest soybean exporter trying to fill his springtime customer orders to Asia.
FIATA questions the reasonableness of assessing demurrage and detention charges against shippers and forwarders during pandemic.
“As long as there continues to be a lack of cargo and documentation handling in the ports due to the virus, our exporters and importers shouldn’t be on the hook for per diem or demurrage charges,” AgTC Executive Director Peter Friedmann said.
The Agriculture Transportation Coalition has developed service contract guidance its members can use to set parameters for when ocean carriers should issue or withhold detention and demurrage charges.
Agriculture shippers and forwarders work with CBP and Census in an effort to eliminate $5,000-$10,000 penalties for minor export data filing errors in the Automated Export System.
Shippers and NVOs urge the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to implement the interpretive rule, while ocean carriers and marine terminals say it needs further refining.
The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission does not expect easy answers to the question of how to fairly assess demurrage and detention when Customs and Border Protection holds containers.
The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission set the new comment deadline for its notice of proposed interpretive rule to address demurrage and detention practices to Oct. 31.
The AgTC asked the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to extend the comment deadline to Oct. 31, calling the rule “the most relevant and far-reaching initiative taken by the FMC in many years.”
The U.S. container shipping industry is eager to weigh in on recommendations produced and approved by the Federal Maritime Commission that promise to bring clarity and fairness to the assessment of demurrage and detention fees.
