FourKites Releases Powerful New Capabilities to Manage Runaway Demurrage and Detention Fees

FourKites, the world’s leading real-time supply chain visibility platform, today introduced several powerful new capabilities aimed at helping international shippers identify and mitigate the risks and costs associated with runaway demurrage and detention (D&D) fees. FourKites’ new demurrage and detention capabilities help shippers more quickly and proactively identify potential D&D fees; prioritize exceptions according to likely business impact; and proactively adjust carriers, lanes or other factors as necessary.

Port congestion, vessel delays, and incorrect or incomplete documentation are common challenges for ocean shippers. Unprecedented global container shortages, port closures, natural disasters, COVID-19 and other recent incidents have exacerbated these issues. D&D fees have reached thousands of dollars per container per day and millions of dollars in annual transportation costs for many shippers, recently prompting the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to consider new regulations to reign in ocean carrier billing practices.

FourKites’ new demurrage and detention product suite is available as part of the company’s Dynamic Ocean℠ platform, which includes precise end-to-end freight tracking, the industry’s most accurate predictive ETAs, international document management and booking functionality. The new capabilities include:

●Exception dashboards, notifications and alerts that monitor and track containers that are likely to incur D&D fees based on real-time rerouting alerts and dwell time data for all ocean shipments. Using these real-time dashboards, customers can prioritize the containers that are currently accumulating fees, or that are at risk of doing so.
●Analytics dashboards that scrutinize performance trends by lane, carrier, stop and other factors to pinpoint systemic problem areas.
●Ability to monetize the potential (and actual) financial impacts of demurrage and detention fees on your transportation costs, enabling you to prioritize the most costly cargo.
●A digital document hub to manage essential international shipping documents accurately and on time, with powerful collaboration tools and easily customizable workflows, alerts and notifications to mitigate shipping delays and unnecessary D&D fees.

"Detention and demurrage fees have become a scourge for shippers, and when piled on top of rising transportation expenses, can make profit margins plummet," said Chris Stauber, vice president of products and international solutions at FourKites. "Attacking D&D fees requires a true end-to-end visibility solution that combines document visibility, yard visibility and robust notifications and alerting so shippers can mitigate fees before they occur. That’s Dynamic Ocean in a nutshell."

FourKites’ Dynamic Ocean platform addresses the full spectrum of ocean shipping issues through advanced document management and collaboration features; state-of-the-art real-time tracking capabilities, including predictive ETAs that are 20% to 40% more accurate than carrier-generated ETAs; and comprehensive multimodal visibility from port to door, including the yard, so shippers can identify and manage the root causes of escalating fees.

Momentum builds for FourKites in international ocean shipping
Within the context of ongoing volatility and rising costs in ocean shipping, FourKites has experienced dramatic growth in its ocean business since it introduced its state-of-the-art Dynamic Ocean platform.

Over the last 12 months, ocean volume tracked on the FourKites platform has increased 232%, while ocean customers have increased nearly 4X over the same period, including Cardinal Health, Arizona Tile, LyondellBasell, McCain Foods, Roehm, Rove Concepts and Yamaha Motors. Dynamic Ocean covers 98% of global ocean shipments, 100% of terminals in North America, and the majority of terminals in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.

“FourKites’ automated reporting and tracking for ocean provides more accurate and real-time data, which allows Canfor to respond to customer inquiries quicker with up-to-date information on our upcoming shipments that would have otherwise had to be manually tracked,” said Bob Hayes, Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Canfor.

FourKites to address D&D best practices at TPMTech
FourKites General Manager of International Products, Steve Dowse, will participate in a panel discussion at TPMTech on Friday, February 25, focused on how technology can resolve the D&D challenge to make cargo flow more efficiently and expedite container returns, especially during critical high-volume periods.

FourKites is the #1 supply chain visibility platform in the world, extending visibility beyond transportation into yards, warehouses, stores and beyond. Tracking more than 2.5 million shipments daily across road, rail, ocean, air, parcel and courier, and reaching 176 countries, FourKites combines real-time data and powerful machine learning to help companies digitize their end-to-end supply chains. More than 1,000 of the world’s most recognized brands — including 9 of the top-10 CPG and 18 of the top-20 food and beverage companies — trust FourKites to transform their business and create more agile, efficient and sustainable supply chains. To learn more, visit https://www.fourkites.com/.