Demurrage / Detention — Storage charges when freight isn't collected or cleared on time — mainly a B2B/freight term, but applies to held courier consignments too.

Why it matters to your store

Relevant if you ship LTL or import; for parcel sellers the equivalent is the holding window before a shipment auto-RTOs.

This is the vocabulary every courier invoice, NDR report and rate card is written in — learn it once, save money forever.

See how →

Worked example

Freight consignment waits 5 days past free period → demurrage accrues daily → sometimes exceeding the freight itself.

The bottom line

Shipping jargon is really just the billing manual in disguise — every term on this list maps to a line on an invoice or a lever on your margins. Pakka Parcel is built so you rarely have to think about it: statuses normalise, bills reconcile, and quotes already include the surcharges.