Scorecard · what each port publishes about itself · read 07/26–07/29/2026
One US port of the six we profiled has published a rule we could read end to end
- US ports publish very different amounts about themselves, and this page ranks the six we profiled by what we could actually read. Savannah is first because its port authority rule is the only one on this site we read end to end — a free-time clock starting at 12:01 AM, given by rule number.
- Port authority documents were located at three of the six and read at one. Los Angeles publishes Tariff No. 4 and it ranks on the first page unquoted; New York and New Jersey publishes a tariff covering dockage, wharfage and demurrage; at Long Beach, Houston and Charleston we located nothing at all.
- US container ports almost all publish a volume figure and no two of them share a period. Five of the six give one, in calendar 2025, the first half of 2026, single months and short tons for 2024 — universal publication with zero comparability, which is why no position column appears anywhere on this site.
- Disclosure and price are unrelated across these six. Savannah discloses most and sits mid-price at $265; New York and New Jersey is the dearest at $360 with no dwell figure at all; Houston publishes what dwell costs without publishing what dwell is. Cheap does not mean open and dear does not mean detailed.
The six ports we profiled, ranked by what each publishes
Six US container ports have been profiled to the same eight questions. Ranked by what each of them publishes about itself, one comes first on a single document.
How this table is built · what we are paid
- What is ranked here is what the port authority publishes about itself — not what is published about it, and not what its carriers publish.
- The scale has four levels: read, located but unread, quoted in the market without a document, and not located. Position follows the depth of the top item rather than the number of items: one rule read end to end outranks five circulating figures, because only the first can be planned against.
- “Not located” describes our search, not the port. Any port here may publish every row it is missing; we did not open it.
- Six ports, not thirty. The five wave 1 profiles are not in this table.
- No port has paid to appear here or to be positioned here, no port was notified of this ranking, and no link on this site is a referral link.
| # | Port | The authority’s own document | Dwell | Local fees | Volume | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Savannah | Rule 34-025 — read end to end: free time starts at the first 12:01 AM after discharge. Rules 34-035 and 34-255 located. | three figures, all consensus | not checked yetgap J | calendar 2025 | the only port authority rule read end to end anywhere on this site |
| 2 | Los Angeles | Tariff No. 4 — located, ranks at position 3 on the port’s only cost query, quoted by nobody including us | five figures spanning 2.2×, plus a live dashboard located | Clean Truck Fund read — $10 per TEU, $20 over 20 ft | calendar 2025, H1 2026 and June 2026 | the widest coverage of the six, and its own tariff still unopened |
| 3 | New York / New Jersey | the authority tariff — located, covering dockage, wharfage and demurrage | not checked yetgap E | not checked yetgap J | two figures differing by roughly half | the document exists and the operational side is empty |
| 4 | Houston | not checked yetnever located — gap B | not checked yetgap E | Sustained Import Dwell Fee read — $45 per unit per day from day 8 | short tons for 2024 | publishes the price of dwell without publishing dwell |
| 5 | Long Beach | not checked yetnever located — gap B | one figure, with no measure stated | a reported increase of 4.77%, unconfirmed | first half of 2026 | three dashboards cover its bay and none has been read |
| 6 | Charleston | not checked yetnever located — gap B | not checked yetgap E | not checked yetgap J | not checked yetgap D | zero primary sources of any kind — a statement about our search |
| Savannah outranks Los Angeles on one rule read end to end against five circulating dwell figures. That is the ordering rule: depth beats breadth, because a rule with a number can be planned against and five disagreeing estimates cannot. | ||||||
our own reading of the six wave 0 profiles · 07/26–07/29/2026
Four findings fall out of that table. One rule of six has been read end to end. Volume is universal and incomparable — five of six publish a figure and no two share a period. Dwell is where disclosure collapses: three of six carry any figure, all of them consensus, and the best-covered port has five that disagree by 2.2 times. And two ports mirror each other: Houston publishes the price of dwell and no dwell figure; Los Angeles publishes dwell five times over and leaves its own tariff unopened. How many free days each carrier gives, which is the other axis entirely: how many free days each port allows.
What counts as disclosure here, and what does not
Disclosure here means the port authority’s own publication. Carrier tariffs are excluded, and the exclusion is load-bearing: New York and New Jersey has twelve tariff lines naming it, and those belong to nine carriers rather than to the port. Counting them as the port’s disclosure would invert this ranking and make it a measurement of nothing.
The two axes are genuinely independent. A port with a rich tariff picture can publish nothing itself, and a port that publishes its rules by number can be absent from every tariff. Where the ports stand on price, which is the other axis: the cost stack ranked port by port.
How this scorecard is built, and why no port paid for a place
What we are paid
- Nothing on this page has been paid for. No port, terminal or carrier has paid to appear here, to be positioned here, or to be left out, and no outbound link on this site is a referral link.
- If that ever changes, the rate goes on the page carrying the link, at one rate, the same for everyone — and a position in a table still will not be for sale.
How every figure on this site is sourced, what each status permits, and the corrections log: how every figure here is sourced.
The dimension where every port scores zero
There is one dimension where every port in this table scores nothing, and it is the dimension where half this site’s findings live.
What the market publishes about port disclosure
This page has no search results of its own — nobody asks for a comparison of ports by disclosure, and nobody publishes one. The contrast below is therefore built from the captures of the six port profiles rather than from a capture of this question.
| Port | Positions its own site holds | What it ranks with |
|---|---|---|
| Savannah | seven of forty-eight addresses across nine queries, eighteen of them dated | rules published by number — which is why one of them could be read |
| Los Angeles | seven of forty across seven queries | six on volume and operations, one on cost — the sharpest disclosure metric we have, and reproducible at any time |
| Long Beach | six of twenty-three, and eleven of twenty-three results carry a date | volume figures and press releases |
the six port profile captures · 07/26/2026
Every port authority ranks for its own name. What differs is what it ranks with, and a ratio of six positions on volume to one on cost is a disclosure profile in itself.
Who is obliged to publish what, and who is not
Who publishes what, in practice — and this table describes findability rather than any legal regime, because we have not read what obliges any of these parties to publish anything.
| Who | The document | Found | Read by us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ocean carriers | US import demurrage tariffs | nine of nine | nine of nine |
| Port authorities | their own tariffs and rules | three of six | one of six |
| Marine terminals | terminal storage tariffs | named at two ports | zero of about eighty |
| Chassis pools | pool tariffs and per diem rates | none | zero |
If a charge arrives from a document you cannot find
If a charge arrives citing a tariff you cannot find, the absence of the document is itself grounds to ask. A demurrage invoice in US trade answers to 46 CFR Part 541, in force since 05/28/2024 and before the D.C. Circuit twice since — read the current text at eCFR rather than a summary of it. Ask for the document the rate comes from, by name and effective date, before arguing about the amount.
What an invoice has to contain, and how the dispute runs: the federal rules your invoice has to meet.
The three ports that publish most, and the one thing each still withholds
The three ports at the top of this table each still withhold one thing, and in each case it is the thing you would want next.
1 · Savannah — the rule, and no local fee at all
The only port authority rule on this site read end to end: 34-025, with the hour the count starts. Two more of its rules are located and unopened. What it does not publish anywhere we could find is a local fee schedule — the one dimension where the ports below it do better.
2 · Los Angeles — the widest coverage, and its own tariff unopened
Volume counted to the individual container across three periods, a live operations dashboard, a fee schedule read in full. And Tariff No. 4, its own document, ranking at position three on the port’s only cost query — quoted by nobody, including us.
3 · New York and New Jersey — the document exists, the operations do not
The authority publishes a tariff covering dockage, wharfage and demurrage, and it ranks. Against that: not one dwell figure, on a port where dwell is a search query of its own. Long Beach, one place below, has the mirror problem — three dashboards over its bay and no tariff located: what it costs to land a box at long beach.
the authority tariff · located 07/26/2026
Where this scorecard does not apply
This scorecard does not apply in five situations, and the second of them is the one that matters most.
- It covers six ports, not thirty. The five wave 1 profiles are not in it, and adding them will move the order.
- “Not located” is not “does not publish”. Two ports sit at the bottom because our search came up empty. That distinction is the whole ethical basis of this page.
- Carrier tariffs are a different axis. A port can be richly priced by nine carriers and publish nothing itself.
- The terminal level is missing for everyone, so nothing here reflects what a terminal discloses — which at some ports is where the money actually moves.
- A port’s position can change with no action on its part, which is the subject of the next block.
How often a port's disclosure changes
This is the one ranking on the site that moves when we read rather than when the market moves. Every other page here changes because a tariff was amended or a figure was published; this one changes when a document we have not opened gets opened.
Three shifts are imminent and all three are ours to make. Reading the New York authority tariff would lift that port above Savannah. Opening Tariff No. 4 would do the same for Los Angeles. Opening any of the three live dashboards over San Pedro Bay would move Long Beach off the bottom half.
Which is why a port’s position here should not be read as a judgement about the port. It is a measurement of what we have opened, and the fastest way to change it is for us to work.
Questions about what US ports publish
Which US port publishes the most?
Savannah, on the measure that matters most here: its own rule is the only one on this site we read end to end. Los Angeles covers more ground overall and still has not had its own tariff opened.
Does a port have to publish its tariff?
What obliges any party to publish is something we have not read. This page describes findability in practice — what we located and what we opened — rather than any legal regime.
Why does Charleston rank last?
Because we found no primary source of any kind for it. That is a statement about our search rather than about the South Carolina Ports Authority, which may well publish all of it.
Do cheaper ports publish more?
No, and there is no relationship at all. The best-disclosed port sits mid-price, the dearest carries no dwell figure, and two of the six are not named in any carrier tariff.
Why is there no terminal column?
Zero of roughly eighty terminal storage tariffs have been read. The scorecard stops at the port level even though many of this site's findings live one level below it.
What is the difference between not published and not found?
The first is a claim about the port and we almost never make it. The second is a claim about us, and it is what the table actually says.
Can a port improve its position here?
Yes, and without doing anything: it is enough for us to read a document the port has already published. This ranking moves when our reading moves.
Why does this page have no search demand?
Because nobody publishes a comparison of ports by disclosure, so nobody searches for one. The page lives on internal links, as /verify/ does.
This scorecard exists because six port profiles asked the same eight questions in the same order. It has no competitor and no search demand of its own, and it is the page that says out loud how much of this site is still an unread document.