CHICAGO [May 15, 2026] — Telegraph announces the first demurrage product built on blended telematics, AI, camera, and railroad data, designed to catch demurrage charges before they accrue, and equip operators with the most accurate data available. For shippers specifically, this helps avoid surprising charges, enables faster review and appropriate disputes, and reduces the burden of reconciling invoices.
Demurrage costs rail shippers an estimated $2 billion annually. No centralized tooling exists to monitor equipment dwell, free-time rules vary by railroad, and disputes are manual, leaving operations teams reacting to charges months after the fact. Telegraph’s Demurrage product changes this for railroads, shippers, and lessors when it comes to their demurrage experience. Telegraph’s customers now monitor every at-risk car. Our AI-powered platform flags equipment before charges accrue and notifies the right team. For railcars with telematics, geofencing automatically validates railroad-reported timestamps, catching billing errors the moment they happen.
“Demurrage has been treated like a toll booth for too long. It’s a symptom of inefficiency, and nobody wins. Railroads don’t want to bill it. Shippers don’t want to pay it”, notes Harris Ligon, Co-Founder and CEO of Telegraph. “We built our Demurrage product so both sides can move past it, identify what’s at risk, avoid what’s avoidable, and dispute what’s wrong.”
What makes Telegraph’s Demurrage product unique is the data layer: telematics, cameras, sensors, and other additive information. The platform takes those inputs, maps them against railroad-reported event milestones, and automatically flags the discrepancies. These could include: a car billed at a facility it never entered, a placement timestamp that doesn’t match the geofence, or a release that the railroad says happened two days after it actually did. What used to take hours of research per car is now a single click.
Telegraph customers currently using the product have cut demurrage spend by over 34% in four months. Shippers across some of the largest rail portfolios in North America are already running on it with the same railroads, same facilities, and same freight, just with better data. If demurrage is a line item your team has been absorbing, it doesn’t have to be.
About Telegraph
Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, and railcar leasing companies. With an innovative platform that provides price transparency, shipment visibility, and proactive business intelligence, Telegraph empowers customers and makes shipping by rail easier and more effective. For more details, visit www.telegraph.io and follow us on LinkedIn.
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