About DDClear

Why I built DDClear — and why it's free right now

If you dispatch drayage, you know the shape of it: a per-diem or detention invoice lands on you, the number's higher than it should be, and you pay it — because leaving it unpaid puts your interchange privileges at risk, and arguing costs more time than it feels worth.

Here's what most carriers never find out: an ocean carrier has to follow a federal billing rule (the FMC's 46 CFR Part 541). When an invoice is missing required information, or was billed late, federal law eliminates the obligation to pay it as billed. When it charges you for days your container couldn't even be moved, that is a separate argument, and a good one. The carriers know the rule. They're betting you don't — and that you won't check.

DDClear checks. You drop in the invoice, it reads it against the rule, shows you exactly what may not be owed, and drafts the dispute letter for you to send in your own name. About a minute, and no spreadsheet. No account or card needed to check an invoice.

One thing to know before you read a result: 46 CFR Part 541 is the ocean carriers' rule. The chassis under your box is usually lent by a different company billing under the UIIA — a private contract rather than federal law, and the largest chassis fleets are not signatories to it at all. So tell DDClear who sent the invoice: it is what decides which rulebook and which dispute routes apply.

So why is it free? Honest answer: because I'm new, and I need to know it actually helps real drayage carriers before I ever charge for it.

I'd rather earn your trust by saving you money first than ask you to gamble on a tool you've never heard of. So right now DDClear is free — use it as much as you want, on as many invoices as you want, and tell me the truth about whether it's useful.

Saving a dispute file to an account already works — it is opt-in, it is free while this is, and it keeps a check and the deadlines DDClear computed for it in one place. What's still ahead is the price: one day DDClear will be a simple paid tool with a flat monthly figure. The free checker will always store nothing; a saved dispute file is stored in your account, and you can delete it and everything in it at any time. That's how it becomes a real business instead of a side project. But the carriers who use it and shape it while it's free won't get left behind: founding users keep founding-user pricing, locked in. Helping me now is the best deal DDClear will ever offer.

Real talk: I went looking for this. No dramatic origin story — I went hunting for a real, expensive problem the big software companies won't touch, because it'll never be the next billion-dollar app. Per-diem and detention overcharges? Perfect. It's quietly costing drayage carriers like you serious money, the federal rule is literally on your side, and almost nobody checks.

I'm not a maritime lawyer or some freight lifer. I'm a builder — I take a buried, miserable problem and turn it into sixty seconds. So that's what I did.

Here's the part that should matter to you: I picked a problem I can live on by serving you well — not by flipping it and vanishing. So I only win if DDClear keeps putting money back in your pocket. It's free right now because I'd rather prove that than tell you about it. Use it, and tell me if I'm full of it. email me.

— Matt, founder of DDClear

DDClear is software and analysis, not legal advice or representation. It judges the invoice against the rule from what the document shows and who issued it — it never predicts what the biller will do — and you review and send everything in your own name. The free checker stores nothing. Dispute files are saved to your account, with any deadline DDClear could compute shown on the file — DDClear does not send reminders, so put the date in your own diary. Delete anytime.