Industry representatives have questioned whether Shipping Lines are driving the prices they are prepared to pay the Container Terminal Operators (CTOs) and Empty Container Parks (ECPs) so low that they (the CTOs & ECPs) in turn have to find other avenues to manage overheads.
Recent activities by Shipping Lines in making last minute changes (redirections) to where empty containers are to be delivered are also now incurring extra costs by transport operators
•   Extra mileage (especially an issue in larger geographical areas)
•   Extra lifts at transport company yard
•   Additional management of vehicles and workloads
•   Loss of equipment to service import/export containers
These are then passed on to their clients, especially in the larger ports where there is a wider geographical impact, when they have to  hold over / re book at the new depot / face slot cancellation fees etc due to last minute changes.
The detention free period has reduced over the years, now mostly 7 days, and is very much a variable between lines
•   Some periods start when vessel departs
•   Some start when last container is off
•   Some start when first day of availability is declared, and
•   Most all include Saturday, Sunday and public holidays
The increased BMSB (“stink bugâ€) biosecurity intervention also has an effect due to the inability of the Inspection Services to keep up with the increased demand for inspection bookings as the BMSB measures require.
Some shipping lines are now trying to separate quayside and landside costs to justify the imposition of these costs on transport operators who have no say in which facility they attend to collect / desire containers. Imposing these costs on the transport operator begins a chain of handling through various parties before the costs actually gets to the import / exporter and all these various parties add on administration fees which substantially increase the final costs to the end-customer.
