Time Is Money
I work in rail traffic. When you receive rail cars from the railroad you only get a certain amount of time to load and unload them, which typically takes about two days. If you don’t return the car to the railroad in two days, then you start getting billed late fees called demurrage. When I first started, I had the understanding that the timer didn’t start until you received the car.
So, when our facility was full, I would tell the railroad to hold on to the extra cars coming in until we can clear out some of the cars we already have. What I did not know what that the timer starts either when you get the car or when the railroad would have given you the car if you hadn’t stopped them. I had about 30 cars held up at the railroad for about a month.
Boy was I shocked when I received the $20,000 demurrage bill at the end of the month.