An importer running two suppliers out of Shanghai booked one container on Maersk and one on MSC last month, both quoted five free days. The Maersk box hit demurrage on day 5. The MSC box didn't hit until day 6. Same route, same terminal, same week. The five-day number on the booking confirmation wasn't the whole story.
Why the Number Doesn't Tell You Everything
Carriers advertise free time as a single figure, usually four to seven days for imports moving through Port Miami. That figure is a marketing shorthand for a longer tariff that spells out the actual trigger date, whether weekends count, and how the clock treats federal holidays.
Two carriers can both say "5 days free" and land on different last free days for containers discharged the same afternoon. The gap comes from three variables buried in each carrier's local tariff: the start trigger, the calendar treatment, and how quickly the arrival notice actually reaches you after discharge.
Maersk and the Gemini Cooperation
Maersk runs its Port Miami services through the Gemini Cooperation, its hub-and-spoke partnership with Hapag-Lloyd. Free time on Maersk-operated bookings typically starts at vessel discharge, and the count runs calendar days from that date, weekends included.
Gemini's hub-and-spoke routing adds a wrinkle: some Maersk containers transship through a regional hub before reaching Miami, and the free time clock doesn't start until the box actually discharges here, not at the origin port. Check the arrival notice date, not the original sailing schedule, when you're timing a Maersk pickup.
MSC as an Independent Carrier
MSC operates alone since the 2M partnership with Maersk dissolved, running the largest independent fleet calling Port Miami. MSC's local tariff commonly grants an extra day of free time compared to Maersk on comparable services, and the start trigger often lands on container availability rather than discharge — the day the terminal marks the box ready for pickup, which can run a day behind the discharge date itself.
That one-day gap between "discharged" and "available" matters more than it sounds. A container discharged Friday afternoon might not show available until Saturday morning, and MSC's clock doesn't start until the availability flag flips. Pull the terminal's container status, not just the vessel schedule, before you assume the clock started.
CMA CGM and the Ocean Alliance
CMA CGM runs Port Miami service through the Ocean Alliance alongside COSCO and Evergreen, the most stable of the three major alliances calling South Florida. Free time on CMA CGM bookings starts at discharge, calendar days, in line with Maersk's structure — but CMA CGM's arrival notices typically post faster, often within hours of discharge instead of the next business day.
Faster notice doesn't add free days, but it gives your dispatch team more usable hours inside the window that already exists. A notice that lands Monday morning instead of Monday night is the difference between scheduling a Tuesday pickup and scrambling for one.
ONE, HMM, and the Premier Alliance
Ocean Network Express, HMM, and Yang Ming run Premier Alliance services into Port Miami on weekly rotations. Free time policies across these three carriers vary more than within Gemini or Ocean Alliance, since each still files its own tariff even while sharing vessel space.
ONE's local Miami tariff tends to match the industry standard five-day window on calendar days from discharge. HMM has granted shorter windows on select South Florida routes in past tariff filings, closer to four days. Yang Ming's terms shift more often than the other two, so a route that carried five days free last quarter isn't guaranteed to carry the same terms on the next sailing.
Premier Alliance freight is where assuming "standard terms" costs the most. Pull the specific carrier's current local tariff for every Premier booking rather than relying on what the last shipment ran.
How to Check Before You Book Pickup
The arrival notice is the fastest source of truth. Most carriers now print the exact last free day directly on the notice instead of making you count days from a stated trigger. Read that line first.
- Confirm the last free day printed on the arrival notice — don't calculate it yourself from a number of days.
- Check the terminal's container status separately from the carrier's notice, since availability can lag discharge by a day.
- Note whether the tariff excludes Sundays or federal holidays — most don't, but a few carrier tariffs do.
- If the notice only states a number of days with no explicit last free day, pull the carrier's local tariff to confirm the trigger before you schedule anything.
When the arrival notice and the terminal status disagree by a day, trust whichever one gives you less time. Scheduling around the tighter number costs nothing. Guessing wrong costs a per diem tier you didn't budget for.
The Checklist
Before you schedule a pickup on a new booking, confirm four things: which alliance or carrier issued the container, the exact start trigger stated on that carrier's current tariff, whether the count runs calendar or working days, and the last free day printed on the arrival notice itself.
At One A Trucks, we pull the carrier tariff for every booking before we schedule a driver, because a five-day quote from Maersk and a five-day quote from MSC don't always mean the same last free day, and a truck that shows up a day late on the wrong assumption turns a routine pickup into a per diem charge nobody planned for.