Container holds and terminal fees, flagged before dispatch

The cost of a wasted trip

Every drayage dispatcher knows this call. The driver is at the gate, and the box will not come out. There is a customs hold, a line hold, or a fee nobody paid. The truck sits, or turns around empty. That trip still cost fuel, driver time and a slot on the board.

DrayTech's job is to catch that before the driver leaves the yard.

Holds on the shipment, not in a portal

DrayTech's container tracking pulls hold status from the terminals and shows it on each shipment and on the dispatch board:

• Customs holds
• Line holds (freight and other carrier holds)
• Terminal holds

A box on hold is clearly marked and is not treated as dispatchable. DrayTech does not book a gate pass for it. When the hold clears, your team is alerted and the box becomes available on the board.

Terminal fees flagged to the team

Some boxes owe terminal fees before they can leave. DrayTech flags those boxes on the shipment so the team can handle the fee before dispatch.

To be clear about what DrayTech does and does not do: DrayTech does not pay terminal fees for you. You pay them the way you do today. DrayTech tells you which boxes need attention, records the fee on the shipment, and makes sure it reaches the invoice.

Fees passed through on the invoice

A fee you paid and forgot to bill is money lost. When a fee is recorded on a shipment, it is passed through to the customer's invoice with the rest of the charges. See drayage billing for how invoices are built.

Not every customer is billed the same way. If a customer's agreement says they do not pay a certain fee, DrayTech warns you before that fee is added to their invoice. You set the rule once, and the system remembers it.

One view of what is blocking each box

On the dispatch board, dispatchers can filter to holds, last free day and empties. Each row shows the status in plain words. A dispatcher planning the morning can see at a glance:

• Which boxes are ready to go
• Which are on hold, and what kind
• Which owe a fee that needs to be handled first
• Which are close to last free day

Why flagging beats checking

Checking holds by hand works when you have ten boxes. It breaks at a hundred. People get busy, a box gets skipped, and the driver finds out at the gate. Automatic flags do not get tired. Every open box is checked, and the flag is on the shipment whether anyone remembered to look or not.

Works with appointments

Holds and appointments are linked. Because DrayTech knows a box is on hold, it will not book a gate pass for it. When the hold clears, the box can move to automatic appointments like any other.