Chassis days, splits, pre-pull and wait time, checked against the rate confirmation before you invoice.

Before a container's invoice goes out, someone reads the customer's rate confirmation, then the delivery order for what was actually ordered, the chassis usage record for how many days and whose chassis, and the tickets from the yard and the warehouse. Then they work out what bills as agreed, what doesn't, and what needs a call to the customer.

For the test, AI does that reading on copies of moves your office already billed and drafts a check sheet for each move: what the rate confirmation allows for pre-pull, wait time, chassis days and split, as written, what the delivery order and records show, and every place they part. It doesn't say which side is right or what the customer owes. Someone in billing settles each line.

A chassis day depends on whose paper sets it. The UIIA describes chassis use as a daily charge agreed by the parties, and says the chassis provider and the container provider need not be the same party. A published billing agreement for a Virginia port chassis pool starts its use period when the customer's container goes on a chassis, ends it when the chassis comes back under the pool's rules, and charges each full and partial day, on-terminal use included, on invoices issued twice monthly. One ocean carrier's published tariff rule on merchant haulage bills its chassis once per interchange at the container yard, counts free time as the day of interchange plus one, and charges nothing if the trucker brings its own. The sheet shows which paper set the start and the stop, whether a partial day counted, and what the rate confirmation says about any of it.

A chassis charge has its own terms. When the FMC wrote its 2024 billing rule, a commenter asked it to extend demurrage and detention to chassis. It declined, and its preamble says the definition excludes equipment other than containers, such as chassis, because per diem can mean containers, chassis or both. So the sheet holds a chassis line against the interchange agreement, the pool's terms and the rate confirmation, and names which one it used. A 2018 notice from a Class I railroad on cross-town moves shows how the question of who owes it can shift: it said pool providers were trying to bill it and the carriers working for it for per diem, when the charge belonged with the customer's company or the shipper. None of this is legal advice.

Splits and pre-pulls need their own proof. A split means the container and its chassis sit at two depots, so the driver has to visit both, and one container can have more than one. A pre-pull brings the box early from the port or ramp to your yard, usually because the consignee isn't ready. The Port of Virginia's FAQ says a reservation doesn't guarantee a chassis and that chassis reservations aren't supported, so the proof of a split tends to live in gate receipts and dispatch notes. The sheet asks for the second location, the dates and who ordered the pre-pull, and lists any charge with nothing behind it.

Wait time can happen at the gate or the dock. On a rate confirmation, wait time usually means the customer's dock, and the free window is whatever that confirmation says. The terminal gate runs on a different clock: California's Health and Safety Code section 40720 says a marine terminal must, with listed exceptions, operate so trucks don't idle or queue more than 30 minutes to get in, counted at terminals with an appointment system from the start of the appointment or the truck's arrival, whichever is later. The sheet separates a ticket's gate time from its dock time and notes any hours the confirmation doesn't price.

A bad chassis changes the count. Under 49 CFR 390.42, a driver or carrier must report known damage or defects in intermodal equipment when it goes back. Section 396.12 has that report carry the carrier's name and USDOT number, the provider's USDOT number, the equipment's number, the date and time and the driver's signature, and the provider keeps it for three months. Addenda can adjust free time for unroadworthy equipment, and California's Business and Professions Code section 22928 also bars per diem, detention and demurrage on days a chassis is out of compliance or equipment is placed out of service in a way that causes them. The sheet puts any defect report beside the chassis days billed. Your reviewer, usually the billing lead, starts with the day count, then the proof, then every line left open.

After your reviewer's yes, the same check runs on newly delivered moves for about 30 days.

Each sheet waits for a person in billing, who resolves every difference and approves the invoice before it posts or reaches a customer.

Nothing else joins that month. A second job is priced by itself.