The receiver says: late, no demurrage. The driver says: two hours at the gate. Both statements describe the same event. Both are told in good faith. Neither is proof. Demurrage evidence from telematics and the booked time slot would have answered that. Before the dispute, not after.
This is where most demurrage claims stall. Not on the law. Under Section 412 of the German Commercial Code, a carrier is entitled to demurrage. That holds if he waits beyond the agreed time, for a contractual reason, or without his own fault. The statute says nothing about who was where, and when. The company has to show that itself. This post is not legal advice. It describes the data such evidence needs.
At a loading dock, three systems run side by side. They never talk. The time slot portal shows the booking: a slot, usually 15 or 30 minutes wide. Telematics shows the real position, to the minute. The yard system shows when the gate opened and unloading began.
Each system keeps its own log. Nobody joins them. The portal operator sees the booking, not the arrival. The driver sees the queue at the gate. His onboard unit files no complaint. The dispatcher gets one email: "late". He reacts without seeing all three clocks at once.
Three separate logs become a checkable case only with one row per stop. Six timestamps belong in it. Arrival, a telematics geofence event. Time slot start, from the portal or the transport management system. Time slot end. Unloading start, from the yard log or the standstill at the gate. Departure, another geofence event. Plus two derived values: waiting time and lateness.
Waiting time and lateness are two different numbers. Not one gap renamed twice. Lateness measures arrival against time slot start. A late truck often triggers a penalty clause. Waiting time measures arrival against actual unloading start. A truck that waits past the agreed time earns demurrage, regardless of arrival time. A truck can arrive late and still earn demurrage, if it waits too long afterward. Mixing both numbers settles no dispute.
One of our own automations runs a matching and geofence step every five minutes. It reconciles telematics-derived geofence visits against open tours. Across the week of September 8 to 14, 2026, visits averaged around 100 per run, over 140 on peak days, against 70 to 100 open tours. A visit only counts when it falls inside a time window around the planned time. That same principle later decides demurrage. We hold no data set that pairs a booked customer slot with a calculated demurrage amount. So this describes the mechanism, not a manufactured number.
The geofence line decides the outcome before a single minute gets calculated. A geofence at the plant gate registers arrival the moment the truck enters the site. A geofence at the ramp registers only the moment the truck is ready to dock. On a large site, several hundred meters sit between the two. With a queue at the gate, several hours.
That gap is the real source of the dispute. Nobody acts in bad faith. The driver means the gate when he says "arrived". The receiver means the ramp when checking "on time". An automation with only a ramp geofence confirms the later time every time. The waiting time at the gate stays invisible. Technically correct, beside the actual point. Proving demurrage needs two geofences per site: one at the gate for plain arrival, one at the ramp for the start of the real wait.
With the six-timestamp record, a demurrage claim becomes a row in a table. Not a memory. Waiting time above the agreed threshold is the evidence Section 412 assumes but does not supply. Backed by two independent sources: geofence and yard log.
Checking a penalty needs more care. Does a delay trigger a penalty at all? What tolerance does the framework agreement allow? Does a circumstance excuse it? Contract questions, every one. The automation delivers facts. Arrival time against time slot, with source and timestamp. No legal judgment. That line belongs in every report dispatch hands to billing.
Without the record, every complaint lands on the dispatcher's desk as a one-off case. Driver messages, telematics portal, email thread, searched by hand for one disputed trip. With the record, it becomes a query: stop ID, six timestamps, two values, source. Billing raises a demurrage claim once waiting time crosses the threshold, without waiting for a complaint. When a customer announces a penalty, dispatch answers within minutes, not days.
Three places break the approach. First, time zones and rounding. A portal stores local time without seconds. Telematics logs UTC to the second. Without a checked conversion, false one-hour gaps appear. Second, the yard log itself. Many sites have no digital timestamp for unloading start, only a delivery note with a date and no time. Then only the standstill at the ramp geofence remains as approximation. Third, the contract. Without a loading or unloading time defined in the framework agreement, even the best record has no threshold. The claim stays contestable, despite a complete timestamp trail.
Automatic arrival notification from telematics shows this. A 15-minute interval is almost always enough for a plain customer notice. Proving demurrage needs more. Two geofences instead of one. A record that pulls in the time slot and the yard log. The same principle also carries toll-telematics reconciliation. It fails on timing, not on amount. And Section 412 demands exactly this evidence, without supplying it. Readable in full at gesetze-im-internet.de.
How many disputed demurrage cases sit open at your company? Because nobody joins arrival, time slot and unloading start into one row.
