Directory · nine charges a US import picks up · read 07/26–07/29/2026

US port fees divide into six the port choice moves and three it does not, and the three are what people look up

⚑ The short answer

US port fees divide into two groups that behave differently. Six charges move with the port and the terminal: demurrage, terminal storage, drayage, the chassis, terminal handling and local port fees. Three do not move at all: the Harbor Maintenance Fee, the Merchandise Processing Fee and the vessel fee the market has been discussing since 2025 are the same whichever port you enter through.
Port fees by US port is the question, and the fees that can actually be looked up per port are the ones nobody publishes comparably. Terminal storage tariffs, chassis and per diem, and local port fees are unread across almost every port here — three of the six port-moving charges — while the federal three are identical everywhere and need no table.
Harbor Maintenance Fee is the charge asked about most often on this page and the one we have read least. The market reports it consistently as 0.125% of cargo value, collected federally, and we have not opened the codified text. It is marked as consensus here rather than quoted as law.
Container ports here bill through more than one party, and no single invoice carries the whole stack. The carrier bills demurrage, the terminal bills storage, the motor carrier bills drayage and the chassis, and customs collects the federal fees. Each charge on this page names its biller and the party that owes it.

Nine charges indexed, one read end to endNothing here is sortable and no total is shownEvery row names its biller and who owes it

Every charge a US import picks up, and who issues each one

US port fees split into two groups that behave completely differently: six charges the port choice moves, and three federal ones that are identical whichever US port the box enters through. The second group is what people look up, and no per-port table of it is possible or needed.

How this index is built · what we are paid

This index lists charges rather than pages, and groups them by whether the port choice moves them at all.
Nothing here is sortable and no total is ever shown. The nine charges have four different bases — a day, a TEU, the value of the cargo, a net ton — and summing them would invent a unit that does not exist.
Every row names the party that issues the charge and the party that owes it. A row that names only an amount would be incomplete on this page.
The 0.125% figure for the Harbor Maintenance Fee is what the market reports, not law. We have not opened the codified text and we cite no section number for any federal charge — naming a paragraph we have not read is the same error as reciting a rule from a press release, in a more confident wrapper.
Nobody has paid to appear in this index, and no link on this site is a referral link.

Every charge a US import container picks up, with its biller and how much of it we have read.
Charge	Billed by	Owed by	Does the port choice move it?	How much of it we have read
Carrier demurrage	the ocean carrier	the party named on the invoice	yes	read in full — nine tariffs, medians $260 to $360nine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026
Terminal storage	the marine terminal	the cargo owner, through the carrier	yes	$221–$222 a day at one port of about thirtythe first terminal tariffs read anywhere on this site; gap A stays open everywhere elseMaher and New York Terminal Conference schedules · read 07/31/2026
Drayage	the motor carrier	the cargo owner	yes	not publishedno comparable dated set with a sample size — gap F
Chassis and per diem	the chassis pool or the carrier	the cargo owner, through the motor carrier	yes	not checked yetgap G
Terminal handling	the ocean carrier	whoever the Incoterm assigns	yes	$290–$370 per TEU quoted at one portno document behind it — never enters a ranking columnmarket consensus · seen 07/26/2026
Local port fees	the port authority, directly or through the motor carrier	the cargo owner	yes	three ports of about thirty readthe New York figure is $14.80 per TEU and comes from the authority’s own tariff rather than from a consensusHouston and Los Angeles · read 07/26/2026; New York and New Jersey · read 07/31/2026
Harbor Maintenance Fee	US Customs and Border Protection	the importer	no — the same at every US port	the market reports 0.125% of cargo valueconsensus, not law — the codified text is unread and no section is citedmarket consensus · seen 07/26/2026
Merchandise Processing Fee	US Customs and Border Protection	the importer	no — the same at every US port	not checked yeta second federal charge on the same entry; codified text unread
USTR vessel fee	assessed on the vessel and passed through	reaches the cargo indirectly	no — the same at every US port	not checked yetdiscussed since 2025 as a per-net-ton charge on certain vessels; the notice is unread and no rate is published here

What an empty-looking cell means: not published — the source publishes no figure here not checked yet — we have not read the document yet

The uncomfortable finding of this page. The one charge read end to end is carrier demurrage — the charge that only applies once you are already late. The charges that would help you plan are the unread ones. Usefulness runs opposite to disclosure here, and pretending otherwise would mean publishing figures we do not have.

How the clock behind the first row runs, and how to keep it from starting: how the demurrage clock runs. What terminal handling costs where anyone publishes it: what terminal handling costs by port.

Start from the invoice you are holding

US port fees are usually looked up in one of three situations, and they need different pages.

A bill has already arrived. Then the question is not what the charge is but whether the document meets its requirements, and that is testable: the federal rules your invoice has to meet.

The port is still being chosen. Then only the six movable charges matter, and of those exactly one is published in comparable form across carriers. The rest of this index says so row by row rather than offering an estimate.

The question is a customs charge. This is the most frequent case in the questions people ask here, and the poorest in our own reading: the federal charges are uniform across ports, the market reports their rates consistently, and we have not opened the codified texts. That is stated in the index above and again below rather than deferred to a footnote.

What each charge page here actually contains

US port fee pages on this site each hold the same things, and the two halves of the index fail in opposite directions — which is worth more to know than any single total.

What the charge is, in the words the tariff or the agency uses rather than in ours.
Who issues it and who owes it — the part that stays knowable even where no amount has been read.
What it costs, with the document and the date it was read, or the named reason there is no figure.
Where it does not apply, which for the movable charges is usually a terminal-level exception.
The federal three are identical for everyone — so “that is not my case” does not apply to them at all, while for the six movable charges it applies constantly.

Why a port-level figure may still not be yours. Several carriers price the terminal rather than the port: at one bay the same carrier charges $210 at four named terminals and $270 elsewhere, and at another port four carriers bill line demurrage only at named berths. A per-port number cannot carry that, and each charge page says where the number breaks down.

How many free days each carrier gives before any of the movable charges start: how many free days each port allows.

How much of the fee stack this site has actually read

Nine charges are indexed above. One is read end to end, one carries a market range with no document behind it, and four are blocked by named gaps — terminal storage, drayage, chassis and local fees beyond two ports.

The hole this page found is in our register itself, not in the data. The gap register holds seventeen entries and not one of them covers a federal import charge. A is terminal tariffs, G is chassis, J is local fees, P is the demurrage billing rule — and the Harbor Maintenance Fee, the Merchandise Processing Fee and the 2025 vessel fee are blocked by no entry at all. Formally they do not count as unread; factually they are. Adding a register entry is a map edit rather than a page edit, so this page publishes the hole instead of quietly patching it, and the three charges keep their consensus status until the texts are opened.

The full register of what has not been read, and how each status is defined: how every figure here is sourced.

Who paid for a place in this list of charges

AmericaPorts is an independent publication. It is not a port authority, a port association, a terminal operator or a federal agency, and it is not affiliated with any of them. The domain is a .com named after a country, which is why this line comes first rather than last.
Nobody has paid for a place here. No port, terminal, carrier or intermediary has paid to appear in this index, to be positioned in it, or to be left out of it.
No link on this site is a referral link, and there is no affiliate code on this domain. If that ever changes, the rate goes on the page carrying the link, at one rate, the same for everyone.
An entry here is not an endorsement. The order is alphabetical or by disclosure, never by anything anyone could buy.

Questions about port fees and customs charges

What are port charges?

Nine charges in two groups. Six move with the port and the terminal — demurrage, terminal storage, drayage, the chassis, terminal handling and local port fees. Three are federal and identical whichever port the box enters through.

How is HMF calculated?

The market reports the Harbor Maintenance Fee consistently as 0.125% of cargo value, collected federally. We have not opened the codified text, so that rate appears here as consensus rather than as law, and we cite no section we have not read.

What is the current Harbor maintenance fee?

The same rate with the same caveat. Note also what a rate does not answer: the follow-up questions people ask are about the minimum, the maximum and the exemptions, and none of those can be given from a rate alone.

What are port storage charges?

Storage is invoiced by the terminal, separately from the carrier's demurrage. Terminal storage tariffs are not read at any port on this site, so no figures are published for them and the gap is named.

What is the difference between demurrage and storage charges?

Different billers and different clocks. Demurrage comes from the carrier's tariff; storage comes from the terminal. They can expire on different days, and one invoice does not tell you about the other.

Who pays for demurrage charges?

The party named on the invoice. The federal rule about who may be billed has been before the D.C. Circuit twice since it was announced, so the conditions are not recited here and the invoice-checking page carries what we can say.

How much does it cost to store a 40 foot container?

The number follows the terminal rather than the port, and terminal storage tariffs are unread here. What is published is the carrier side, which is a different invoice from the storage one.

Do port fees differ by port?

Six of the nine do; three do not. The three that do not are the ones searched for most often, which is why a table of fees by port answers less of this question than it appears to.