Are the South Florida ports open at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year? Every terminal, and what it does to your free time

Christmas and New Year: the two days that are certain

Christmas Day is Friday 25 December 2026 and New Year's Day is Friday 1 January 2027. Port Everglades Terminal marks both NO WORK on its published schedule. Its tariff, Florida International Terminal's and POMTOC's all list them among the four days of the year when no work is done at all, alongside Independence Day and Labor Day.

Because both land on a Friday, each one turns into a four day stop. A container still inside the gate on Thursday afternoon is next reachable on Monday morning, the 28th of December and the 4th of January.

South Florida Container Terminal lists Christmas and New Year as holidays in its tariff without saying which ones stop work, and the other PortMiami terminals publish no calendar, so their row on the board below says not posted. It will change when they post, not before.

Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve end at 5

Thursday 24 December and Thursday 31 December are working days with a hard stop. The FIT, PET and POMTOC tariffs all say no work is done after 5 in the evening on either eve.

In practice the truck has to be in line well before that. POMTOC takes trucks until 4 on a normal day, PET lets a truck that reaches the in-gate by 4:30 make a double move, and FIT closes its gate at 4:30 so the trucks already inside can be finished. On an eve, with every importer in the district trying to beat the same weekend, aim for the morning.

Thanksgiving, Thursday 26 November

Thanksgiving is on every terminal's holiday list, and on none of their no-work lists. That means the gates are not shut by contract. Whether a terminal opens is its own decision, posted to customers the week of.

For a sense of what that looks like: last year Crowley's Port Everglades terminal closed on Thanksgiving Day and opened 7 to 3 on the Friday after. That was 2025, and a 2025 notice is a hint, not a schedule. As of 28 October 2026 no terminal at either port had posted its Thanksgiving hours. We will update this page when they do.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is not a holiday in any of the tariffs. Expect a normal day with a heavy one on top of it.

Does the holiday count as one of your free days?

This is the question that decides the bill, and the three terminals that publish an answer give three different ones.

South Florida Container Terminal gives four business days of free time on a dry import and two on a reefer, with Saturdays, Sundays and ILA holidays excluded. A holiday never uses up one of your days there, open or not.

Florida International Terminal gives four days on a dry import and two on a reefer or a flat rack, with weekends and ILA holidays excluded except where the terminal gates are open. So at FIT a holiday is free if the gate stays shut, and counts against you if FIT decides to open it.

Port Everglades Terminal says it outright: when it opens on a weekday holiday, that day counts as a workday toward free time. POMTOC gives four business days and excludes weekends and ILA holidays.

So the same Thanksgiving can cost you a free day at one terminal and nothing at the one next door. Which terminal your box is at is on the arrival notice. If it is FIT or PET and the gate opens, plan as if the clock is running, because it is.

What a pre-pull buys you here

This is the time of year where the arithmetic is easiest to see. Pulling a container before a long closure costs a move and some yard storage. Leaving it inside a terminal that is shut for four days, past a last free day, costs demurrage for days when nobody can collect it, because the gate you would need is closed.

That is not a reason to pre-pull everything. It is a reason to know which of your boxes have a last free day between the 23rd of December and the 4th of January, which takes ten minutes to check, and to tell us about them before the week of Christmas rather than during it.

How to check any holiday yourself

Port Everglades Terminal publishes a holiday schedule for the year and keeps it current. FIT, PET, POMTOC and SFCT publish tariffs, and every one of them has a definitions section that lists the holidays and says which are no-work days. The rest of the PortMiami terminals send customer notices, which means somebody at your company has to be on the list.

The useful habit is a standing check two weeks before each holiday, not a search on the morning of it. And if a container has to move on a day the marine terminals are shut, the rail ramps are the only thing that might still be running, which helps only if your box is sitting there.