Port profile · Houston, Texas · USHOU · figures read 07/26–07/29/2026
Port of Houston is first in the United States, and the measure has to travel with the claim: 220.1 million short tons of foreign waterborne tonnage in 2024, a figure that counts liquid and bulk cargo alongside containers. On containers it is not first — Port of Los Angeles moved 10,239,318 TEU in calendar 2025. Both statements are true and neither survives without its measure.
Three separations belong here because the results mix them in. The busiest Texas port of entry in those results is Laredo, which is a land crossing on the Mexican border rather than a seaport. Texas is not one port: Corpus Christi and Texas City are separate places with separate figures. And tonnage is not boxes. How Houston compares with its actual neighbours: how houston and new orleans actually differ, how gulf coast and east coast actually differ, the Gulf Coast ports compared.
Port Houston and Port of Los Angeles · read 07/26/2026. No rank column is printed while the annual container series stays unread — gap C.
Port of Houston runs on a clock nobody wrote for it. Eight of the nine carriers publish a number of free days — four days with most of them, five with COSCO — and not one of those lines names Houston. The days apply here through a residual group, so the count that governs your box was set without this port in mind.
Port of Houston’s own tariff would settle both the days and the hour, and we have not located it at all. That is weaker than the cell on the New York or Los Angeles profiles, where the authority’s document at least ranks in the port’s own results. The practical consequence is simple: a tariff that does not name your port still runs a clock on it.
How this profile is built · what we are paid
Container discharged at Houston · the free time comes from a group rate that never names this port
| Whose tariff | Scope | The clock starts | Source · read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Ports Authority | Savannah, Rule 34-025 | first 12:01 AM after discharge | GPA Rule 34-025 · read 07/26/2026 |
| Maersk | Los Angeles and Long Beach imports | first 3:00 AM after discharge | Maersk, USA Imports · read 07/26/2026 |
| Seaboard Marine | US imports | first 08:00 of the first working day after discharge | Seaboard Marine, 11/05/2024 · read 07/26/2026 |
Port of Houston fills this stack in the opposite order from every other profile on the site. The carrier line carries eight rate lines here with a median of $270, five carriers naming the port outright. The local-fees line, empty almost everywhere else, is the one we have read here too: $45 per unit per day from day 8 after free time expires — so two parties bill the same day.
An empty carrier cell here does not mean we failed to open something. Nine tariffs were read in full and four of them name Houston outright, which is what changed on 01/08/2026: the empty cells left here belong to charges nobody publishes, not to a port nobody names.
What a 40-foot import container picks up at Houston — filled in the opposite order from every other port
What the same stack looks like where the tariffs do name the port: the cost stack ranked port by port.
Demurrage: nine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026. Dwell fee: Port Houston · read 07/26/2026.
| Charge at Houston | Billed by | Owed by | The document that sets it | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carrier demurrage | Ocean carrier | Consignee or the counterparty named on the invoice, not both | the carrier’s US import tariff, through a group that does not name Houston | not publishedthe tariffs name this port; the rate that applies was written for a residual group |
| Sustained Import Dwell Fee | Port Houston, the authority itself | Cargo interest | the port’s own fee schedule | $45 per unit per day from day 8Port Houston · read 07/26/2026 |
| Terminal storage | Marine terminal operator | Cargo interest, usually via the carrier | the terminal tariff at Bayport or Barbours Cut | not checked yetgap A |
| Terminal handling | Ocean carrier | Whoever the Incoterm assigns | the carrier’s tariff, by port | not checked yet |
| Drayage | Motor carrier | Cargo interest | a quote, not a published tariff | not publishedgap F |
| Chassis per diem | Chassis pool or carrier | Motor carrier, passed through to you | the pool tariff | not checked yetgap G |
| The rest of the port fee schedule | Port Houston | By fee | the port’s fee schedule | not checked yetgap J |
Port Houston fee schedule · read 07/26/2026. Nine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–07/29/2026.
Port of Houston runs its container business at Bayport and Barbours Cut, and neither is named in any of the nine tariffs we read. That makes this table the opposite of the New York one: here the terminals are places, not carriers of rates, and which berth your service calls at does not change the demurrage line.
| Terminal | Named in any tariff? | Address | Gate hours and appointments | Storage tariff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bayport Container Terminal | not by terminal — the four carriers that name Houston price the port whole | found, not readan address appears in the results; no port document read — gap H | not checked yetgap H | not checked yetgap A |
| Barbours Cut Container Terminal | not by terminal — the four carriers that name Houston price the port whole | not checked yetgap H | not checked yetgap H | not checked yetgap A |
Port of Houston is the one port on this site where we know what dwell costs and not how long it lasts. Not a single dwell figure for Houston has been read, while dwell time is one of the questions this port is asked most — and the charge for dwell is read in full, at $45 per unit per day from day eight.
That inversion reads like an editing error and it is the most informative line on the page: the price of the quantity is known and the quantity is not. It is the exact mirror of Los Angeles, which has five dwell figures in circulation and no port fee for dwell at all.
Which dwell each port means, and who publishes a definition: how long a box sits, and which dwell is meant. Which ports are backed up right now: which ports are backed up right now.
Port of Houston publishes the only port authority charge tied directly to dwell that we have read anywhere on this site. It matters beyond Houston: it is the read proof that a port can bill for time directly, rather than only through the carrier’s tariff.
| Fee | Port | Amount | Who pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustained Import Dwell Fee | Houston | $45 per unit per day from day 8Port Houston · read 07/26/2026 | Cargo interest — billed by the port, not the carrier |
| The rest of the port fee schedule | Houston | not checked yetgap J | not checked yet |
| Clean Truck Fund rate | Los Angeles, for contrast | $10 per TEU · $20 over 20 ftPort of Los Angeles · read 07/26/2026 | Motor carrier, passed through |
| Port traffic fee increase | Long Beach, for contrast | found, not readreported as 4.77%, unconfirmed against the port | not checked yet |
Port Houston publishes its charge more readably than its statistics, which is the mirror image of Los Angeles. Both disclose about half of what an importer needs, and they disclose different halves — a thing you can only see by asking every port the same eight questions.
| What an importer needs | Published? | Read by us? |
|---|---|---|
| A charge tied to dwell, with its rate and start day | Yes — Sustained Import Dwell Fee | readread 07/26/2026 |
| Tonnage, dated | Yes — 220.1M short tons for 2024 | readread 07/26/2026 |
| A container figure in TEU | not checked yetgap D | not checked yet |
| The port’s own tariff | not checked yetnever located — gap B | not checked yet |
| Free time in days | not checked yetgap B | only through a group that does not name Houstonnine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026 |
| Dwell with a definition | not checked yetgap E | not checked yet |
| Gate hours and appointment systems | not checked yetgap H | not checked yet |
| Terminal storage tariffs | not checked yetgap A | not checked yet |
| Confirmed 2 of 8 · not checked yet 6. Opening Port Houston’s own tariff is the cheapest win available on this profile, because a port authority’s free-time rule usually sits in the same document as its fee schedule. | ||
Every port we cover, with the same eight questions asked of each: every US container port we cover.
Port of Houston serves Texas by road and the interior by rail, and even the leg from the terminal into the city is asked about as its own question. The road leg is the line this site cannot price at any port.
| Destination | How the box moves | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Houston metro, from Bayport | road | not publishedgap F |
| Dallas–Fort Worth | road, or rail then road | not publishedgap F |
| The Midwest | rail, then road | not publishedgap F |
Which port Dallas cargo should actually come through: which port your dallas cargo should enter through.
Your box is discharged at another Gulf port and comes back by road, and the tariff that applies is the one where it landed.
Who pays depends on the cause: the carrier for its own schedule change, the shipper for a late gate-in.
A customs or agency hold does not stop the clock, and here it can start a second one: free time keeps running, and the port’s dwell fee begins on day eight.
Cargo interest, to two different billers.
The container moves to an examination site and back, and those days count against both clocks.
Cargo interest pays the move and the time.
This is the local one. At day eight after free time expires the port’s own Sustained Import Dwell Fee switches on at $45 per unit per day, on top of whatever the carrier is already charging.
Cargo interest, and the second invoice comes from the port authority rather than the carrier.
Both of the first two have their own page: when the ship skips your port and what to do when the box will not move.
Port of Houston demurrage arrives on a carrier’s invoice, not the port’s, and that invoice answers to a federal rule: 46 CFR Part 541, in force since 05/28/2024. The rule has been before the D.C. Circuit twice since, and the decision of 09/29/2025 changed who may be billed — so the text to read is the current one at eCFR, not a summary of the 2024 announcement.
One local caveat matters here more than anywhere else on the site. That federal rule governs carrier demurrage and detention. Port Houston’s own dwell fee is a different charge from a different biller, and whether the same rule reaches it is something we have not checked.
What the invoice has to contain, and how the dispute runs: the federal rules your invoice has to meet.
Descriptive, not legal advice. The tariff and the invoice in your own file govern your case.
Port of Houston sits in a metro we have not counted in the Federal Maritime Commission’s register of ocean transportation intermediaries — the register was counted for Los Angeles with Long Beach and for Savannah, and not here. The two standing caveats apply whenever it is: the count is a metro figure rather than a port figure, and absence from the register is not a finding about a company.
FMC OTI register download · read 07/28/2026.
How each status is defined and what it may be used for, plus the corrections log: how every figure here is sourced.
On foreign waterborne tonnage yes, at 220.1M short tons for 2024. On containers no — Los Angeles moved 10,239,318 TEU in calendar 2025. Two different measures, both true, and the tonnage one includes liquid and bulk.
The results answering that question point to Laredo, which is a land crossing on the Mexican border rather than a seaport. A port of entry is a customs code, and Texas holds them on land as well as on water.
No line naming Houston appears in any of the nine import tariffs we read. The rate comes from each carrier's group for ports not named separately, so it was written without this port specifically in view.
At Houston it is literal: a Sustained Import Dwell Fee of $45 per unit per day from day 8 after free time expires, levied by the port. It is the only charge of its kind we have read at any US port.
Because there are two billers here. The carrier bills demurrage under its tariff and the port bills its own dwell fee, and the two clocks start on different days and count from different events.
No dwell figure for this port has been read here, so the cell says not checked yet. We have read what the port charges for dwell without having read how long boxes actually sit.
Texas is not one port. Corpus Christi and Texas City sit alongside Houston in these results, and on the entry side Laredo appears as a land crossing rather than a seaport.
Whatever your tariff's group line says — four with most carriers and five with COSCO. None of those lines carries the name Houston, and the clock runs on it regardless.