Empty container dehire: the charges nobody budgets for

Import jobs are usually planned to the delivery and no further. The empty return is treated as an afterthought, and it is where a well-priced job quietly loses money.

What dehire means

Once you have unpacked, the container belongs back with the shipping line, at a nominated empty park. Returning it is dehire. The line allows a period of free time, and after that detention charges accrue per container, per day, until it is back.

Why it goes wrong

• Free time is counted from a date on the paperwork, not from the day the container reached you.
• The nominated empty park can change, and the park you used last month may not be the right one now.
• Empty parks have their own booking windows and their own congestion.
• A container that is unpacked but not booked for collection is still accruing charges.

How to keep it cheap

Book the dehire when you book the delivery, not when you finish unpacking. If you know the container will be on site for four days, we can plan the collection for day four rather than starting the conversation on day five.

Tell us the nominated park and the last free day. We are inducted across ten empty park facilities around Sydney — DP World container parks, ECS, ACFS Edepot, Tyne ACFS, MCS Cooks River, Qube Moorebank, Medlog, Medlog Minto, Goldlead and Swift — so the constraint is almost never which park it is. It is whether there is time left to reach it.

The drop trailer alternative

If unpacking is slow, a drop trailer often works out cheaper overall: we leave the loaded trailer with you and collect it later, so the unpack happens on your schedule without a truck waiting and without the container sitting on your site accruing detention while you find a slot.