The last free day is not a deadline. It is the day the meter starts.

Why nobody can tell you a single number

There is no South Florida free time. There is POMTOC's free time, South Florida Container Terminal's free time, Port Everglades Terminal's free time, and on top of those, whatever free time your shipping line contracted with you.

Each terminal publishes a tariff and each tariff is its own document with its own effective date. POMTOC's current tariff took effect on 1 December 2024 and a new one takes effect on 1 July 2026. A number you were quoted two years ago is not a number you can rely on now, and this is the reason we do not publish a table of free days on this site: it would be wrong within a year and somebody would plan around it.

So the honest instruction is the boring one. Read the tariff for the terminal your box is actually at, on the day it lands.

Two allowances, not one

The terminal's free time governs demurrage: how long the box may sit on their ground.

The line's free time governs per diem: how long you may keep their container out before they charge for the equipment. These run on different clocks and they are frequently different lengths, which is why an importer can be comfortably inside one and already paying on the other.

When someone tells you the free time is five days, ask which of the two they mean. Half the confusion in this whole area comes from that one unasked question.

Weekends, and the trap in them

Terminal tariffs commonly treat weekends differently before and after free time expires: days that do not count against you while free time is running can count fully as storage days once it has run out.

The practical effect is that a container going late over a weekend gets expensive faster than the calendar suggests. A Friday last free day is not the same problem as a Tuesday one, and a plan built on business days is the wrong plan.

Check this specific point in the tariff of the terminal holding your container, because it is exactly the sort of clause that differs between two facilities inside the same port.

How to find yours, in practice

The container number and the terminal are enough. The terminal's site will show availability, holds and the last free day once the box is discharged and released.

What actually delays a pickup is rarely the free time. It is a hold: customs, freight, line release, or an unpaid terminal balance. A box can be sitting available with the clock running and be impossible to collect because something upstream is not cleared, and the demurrage accrues throughout.

So the useful question at day one is not just when the last free day falls, it is whether anything is currently preventing collection. If something is, the clock is your problem and the hold is somebody else's, and the two need chasing separately.

The decision the day forces

Once you know the date, you have three options and they are all fine depending on the arithmetic.

Take delivery before it. Cheapest, when your dock can receive.

Pre-pull it. Move the container out to a yard before the free time ends, which stops the terminal clock while you wait for your receiving window. The yard costs something; it usually costs less than terminal storage.

Let it run, deliberately. Sometimes a day or two of demurrage genuinely is cheaper than a rushed truck at a premium, or than paying twice to move the same box. What is expensive is letting it run without deciding to.