Last month, a Riyadh-bound container of ours sat at Jeddah Islamic Port for nine days after discharge. The vessel arrived on time; the bottleneck was yard congestion and a customs inspection window. Demurrage ran about USD 75 per day after the fifth free day. In September 2026, that isn’t a peak-season anomaly—it’s just Tuesday.
Plain math: Riyadh is about 400 km from Dammam and about 950 km from Jeddah. Truck quotes I got this week: Dammam–Riyadh at 2,100–2,400 SAR per forty-footer; Jeddah–Riyadh at 4,100–4,600 SAR. That spread covers a lot of demurrage days.
I used to default to Jeddah because more direct loops call there. Dammam usually means 3–4 extra days at sea. But run the numbers end-to-end, and Dammam often still wins on landed cost.
For your Q4 restock, here’s what I’d do: ask for split quotes by gateway—ocean plus drayage separately; don’t accept fewer than five free demurrage days; and confirm the carrier allows merchant haulage out of Dammam, or savings vanish into forced trucking. When did you last question the port your forwarder picked for you?