The in-bond clocks: 30 days, then the 15-day trap

Clock one: the famous 30 days

Under 19 CFR 18.1, an in-bond movement must be completed within 30 days of departure, 60 by barge, and the arrival must be reported within 2 business days, identifying the receiving facility by its FIRMS code. This clock is well-behaved because everyone watches it: the filer, the bonded carrier, the destination facility. It appears on checklists. It gets calendared. It is, statistically, not your problem.

Clock two: the 15 days nobody calendars

Once the freight arrives at the destination port, a second clock starts: 15 calendar days to do something final with the goods, enter them into US commerce, export them, or admit them to a foreign-trade zone. Calendar days, weekends included. The trap has a shape: the in-bond move completes, everyone relaxes because the famous clock was beaten, and the freight sits at the destination while entry documents trickle in. Day 16 arrives before the commercial invoice does.

The fix is procedural, not heroic: whoever files your in-bond should calendar both clocks and start collecting the entry documents while the freight is still rolling, so arrival triggers an entry instead of a wait. That is how we run every in-bond we file, and it is why the second clock is a paragraph on this page instead of a war story in your inbox.