Demurrage for fuel carriers and buyers

Hours at the rack are billable. Proving them shouldn't be a fight.

Demurly records waits at the terminal and at the drop with GPS, timestamps and photos. Carriers send the charge in a few taps. Fuel buyers approve it, dispute it or pay it from the same record.

For carriersStart free For fuel buyersInvite your carriers

Buying fuel? Review a sample charge firstGPS trail, driver's photos and the math. No account needed.

Free for fuel buyers · No annual fee for fleets with 1–10 drivers · 90-day trial for larger fleets

Got a real charge from your carrier? Open the link in their email. No account needed.

A sample charge on a fuel buyer's phone in Demurly: $262.50 for a 3 hour 25 minute wait at Riverside Fuel Terminal, with the free hour, the billable time and the rate.

A fuel buyer's view of one charge in Demurly: a 3 hour 25 minute wait at Riverside Fuel Terminal, one hour free, 2 hours 25 minutes over, billed as 2 hours 30 minutes in 15-minute steps at $105 an hour for $262.50, with the truck's GPS trail on a map and three photos from the driver.

SAMPLE RECORD

6:16Recording started · queue lane, Riverside Fuel Terminal6:20Photo · the line at Gate 27:41GPS · through the gate8:40GPS · at the rack, Bay 410:08Stopped · drove off after 3h 52mCharge · 3h 00m billable × $105.00/hr = $315.00Sent to Ridgeline Petroleum

94.5%

of fleets charge detention fees

<50%

of those invoices are paid

39.3%

of stops, drivers reported being detained

135M+

hours lost to detention in 2023

Across US for-hire trucking, not fuel hauling alone. 2023 data. American Transportation Research Institute, 2024

The problem

Why demurrage turns into an argument

Nearly every fleet charges for detention, and across trucking they're paid on fewer than half of those invoices. The fight is almost always about proof.

Tank trucks lined up inside a fuel terminal, seen from the cab of the next truck in line — The line to load. Every minute of it is billable, if someone can show it happened.

What the carrier bills

Summit Fuel Haulers

Detention invoice · Bill to Ridgeline Petroleum

INV 20417

Arrived, Riverside Fuel Terminal: 6:16
Departed: 10:08
Wait: 3h 52m
Free time: − 1h 00m
Billed, 15-minute steps: 3h 00m × $105.00

Amount due$315.00

Arrival per driver's logbook.

What the buyer checks it against

Riverside Fuel Terminal

Gate 2 · Inbound log · Oct 31

Page 3

In	Carrier	Unit	Out
7:22	Cobalt Tank Lines	118	9:31
7:33	Prairie Fuel Co.	52	9:44
7:41	Summit Fuel	214	10:08
7:56	Ridge Transport	309	10:20

On site, by the log2h 27m

AP's math: 1h 30m over free time = $157.50.

1h 25min the queue before the gate. Neither paper can show it.

Day 1
The invoice goes out for $315.00, with the driver's logbook note behind it.
Day 12
AP pays $157.50, from the gate log, and marks it settled.
Day 30
Third email about the $157.50. Dispatch is still looking for the driver's note.
Day 60
Written off, or paid to keep the lane. Either way, the next load starts with less trust.

Nobody lied. Nobody could show what happened.

What it costs

Put your own numbers on it

One disputed wait is a hundred dollars and an afternoon of emails. Across a year of loads it's a line on the P&L. Set the sliders to your operation and see what the argument costs.

Trucks hauling fuel25

Loads a week, per truck12

Loads that wait past free time15%

Time over free time, per wait1h 00m

Your detention rate$100/hr

Share of it you're paid today50%

Across US trucking, ATRI found fleets are paid for fewer than half of the detention invoices they send.

$117,000

of wait time billed a year that never gets paid

Waits a year: 2,340
Billed per wait: $100
Billable a year: $234,000
Unpaid per truck: $4,680

Your numbers, the math as live formulas, and a what-if table to share with your team.

An estimate from the numbers you set, to show what's at stake. It isn't what Demurly would recover: a record makes the wait provable, and paying it is still between you and the other company.

Try it yourself

Settle this one

A sample dispute, with the numbers Demurly would bill. Pick what you'd do as the buyer, and watch how the charge is worked out.

You're the fuel buyer

Summit Fuel Haulers billed $315.00 for a 3h 52m wait at Riverside Fuel Terminal. Your gate log says the truck checked in at 7:41, not 6:16.

Sample record · worked out by Demurly

Wait (6:16 to 10:08): 3h 52m
Free time: − 1h 00m
Billable, in 15-minute steps: 3h 00m
Rate: × $105.00/hr
The charge: $315.00

Now open the whole chargeThat was one question. The sample charge has the GPS trail on a map, the driver's photos, the bill of lading and the history, and you can approve or dispute it. No account needed.

One load, start to finish

How Demurly settles it

One record follows the wait from the terminal to the payment, from a driver's phone to the buyer's approval.

At the terminal

The driver records the wait

Dana pulls into the line at Eastgate Rack and taps Start. The time comes from that tap and her phone's location, not from anyone's memory, and it holds up if the signal drops.

Starts with one tap when the truck arrives
The phone's location is logged through the wait
A photo is required before it can stop
Stops by itself if the truck drives away

The Demurly driver app on a phone, recording: 1 hour 48 minutes elapsed at Eastgate Rack, GPS good, one photo saved, and a Stop Recording button.

In the carrier's office

The carrier checks it and sends it

Every stopped wait lands in the carrier's review queue with the customer, the load and the amount already worked out. Nobody retypes times from a log sheet.

Your rate and free time, per customer
Billed in 15-minute steps, the same way every time
Send one, or a whole batch at once

The carrier's review queue in Demurly: four records from drivers Kim Nguyen and Luis Ramirez, each with its customer, load number, wait and amount, ready to send.

At the fuel buyer

The buyer reviews the evidence

The buyer sees what the carrier sees: when the truck arrived, where it waited, the photos the driver took, and how the amount was reached. Buyers use Demurly for free.

Times, GPS trail, photos and the math on one screen
Approve, or dispute it with a reason
Pay by card in Demurly, or mark it paid

One record open in a fuel buyer's Demurly inbox: $262.50 for a 3 hour 25 minute wait, the terminal, load, BOL, driver, start and end times, 41 GPS points, three photos, and Approve and Dispute buttons.

When they disagree

Disputes get answered on the record

The buyer's gate log said the truck checked in at 7:41. The driver's phone had it in the queue outside the gate from 6:16, with a photo to show it. The carrier answered on the record, and the buyer approved the full charge.

A dispute and its answer stay on the record
The history can't be edited after the fact
Approved after a dispute, it's billed like any other

A record's event timeline in Demurly, newest first: approved by the customer, a comment from the carrier, rejected by the customer with the reason that their gate log shows a later check-in, and sent to the customer the day before.

The carrier's comment on the record: Kim's phone has the truck in the queue lane outside Gate 2 from 6:16, with the GPS trail and the 6:20 gate photo; the gate log starts at check-in, after the queue cleared.

Who it's for

One record, three jobs

Fuel Buyer

Approve what's real. Dispute what isn't.

Every charge arrives with its GPS trail and photos
Dispute with a reason, in one place
Approved charges as a scheduled CSV for your AP team

Free to use

Invite your carriers

Carrier

Bill every wait you can prove.

Drivers record on the phone they already carry
Charges worked out from your rate and free time
Get paid by card, with payouts to your bank

No annual fee up to 10 drivers

Start free

Driver

Tap when you arrive. Tap when you leave.

Works in your phone's browser, nothing to install
Sign in with the number and PIN from your carrier
Keeps your times even when the signal drops

Set up by your carrier

Driver sign-in

Works with

It fits the systems you already run

A five-truck carrier can run Demurly from a phone and a browser. A large fleet or buyer can connect it to the systems they already have, so nobody retypes a charge and their approval rules still apply.

Carriers' books

QuickBooks Online, NetSuite and SAP Business One (early access): approved charges become invoices, and payments sync both ways.

Buyers' AP

Approved charges delivered as a CSV on your schedule, ready for your payables system.

Your trading partners

EDI X12: incoming 214s start and stop records, and approved charges go out as 210s.

Your rules

Single sign-on (SAML), approval limits by role, and an audit log of every change.

Your own systems

A REST API and signed webhooks, documented from the same file the app is tested against.

The carrier's NetSuite sync in Demurly: invoice settings, automatic invoicing turned on, and recent activity showing two records invoiced in NetSuite.

Pricing

Pricing you can read in one breath

Fuel buyers use Demurly for free. Carriers pay a yearly fee by fleet size, with none at all up to 10 drivers, plus a fee on each charge paid through Demurly.

Carriers: yearly fee

Carrier yearly fee by number of drivers
Drivers	Per year
1–10	No fee
11–50	$2,500
51–100	$5,000
101+	$7,500

Paid plans start with a 90-day free trial.

Carriers: per charge

Every carrier, the free plan included, pays 3.5% + $1 on each charge paid through Demurly, taken from the payout. Nothing on charges that are rejected or paid outside Demurly.

Example: a $150 charge paid by card

The charge: $150
Card processing, shown to the buyer before paying: $4.79
The buyer pays: $154.79
Demurly fee (3.5% + $1), from the carrier's payout: $6.25
The carrier receives: $143.75

Buyers who pay by check, ACH or through their own books mark the charge paid; no card fee applies. Full pricing

The evidence

How the evidence is handled

Seen by the two companies on the charge
The carrier's team and the fuel buyer it's sent to see the GPS trail and photos. No one else does.
Location only during a wait
The phone logs where the truck is while a wait is being recorded, never through the rest of the day.
A history no one can edit
Every step, from the driver's first tap to payment, is kept in the record's history as it happened.
Kept for seven years
Like any financial record, so an audit two years from now still has the proof behind each charge.

Demurly LLC, a US company
Hosted on US servers
Payments through Stripe
Two-step sign-in

Security and privacy details

Who built it

Built by someone who's been on both sides

gallons delivered a year: 1B+
sent detention bills, and paid them: Both sides

Demurly's founder comes from fuel distribution: managing hundreds of drivers and carriers, with over a billion gallons a year delivered on the company's own trucks and through third-party carriers. That's both sides of the charge: sending the detention invoice, and being asked to pay one.

Questions, or want to try it on your own lanes first? Talk to a person, not a sales script.

Book a 15-minute call Contact us

Questions people ask

Do I need an account to approve a charge?

No. When a carrier sends you a charge, the email has a link to it. If it went to your company email address, you can review the evidence and approve or dispute from that link. You can create a free account later from the same link.

What if my carrier and I disagree on free time?

Each record shows the free time and rate that were applied, set by the carrier for your account. If it's wrong, dispute it with a reason. The carrier can correct the record and send it again, and every change stays in its history.

Who sees the photos and GPS?

The carrier's team and the fuel buyer the charge is sent to. Location is only logged while a wait is being recorded.

Can a record be changed after it's sent?

Details can be corrected and the record sent again, but nothing is overwritten: the history shows every step, who took it and when, and it can't be edited.

Do terminals have to use Demurly?

No. The driver records the wait on their own phone. The terminal doesn't need to do anything.

Is detention the same as demurrage?

Close enough for this. In trucking, detention usually means paying a carrier for time its truck is held beyond the free time. In fuel hauling, the same charge is often called demurrage. Demurly handles that charge, whatever you call it.

What does it cost?

Fuel buyers pay nothing to use Demurly. Carriers with up to 10 drivers pay no yearly fee; larger fleets pay by fleet size. Every carrier pays 3.5% + $1 on each charge paid through Demurly. Card payments add a processing fee for the buyer, shown before paying.

Put the next wait at the rack on the record

Carriers: add your rate and free time and a driver, and the next wait is recorded as it happens. Fuel buyers: invite your carriers, and their next charge arrives with its evidence.