Editorial standards

How we research

• Primary sources first. Rules, fees and limits come from the agency, harbor, port district, Water Board, certifying body or business that sets them: their web pages, ordinances, fee schedules and published PDFs. We use trade press, insurers and forums for background and label them as secondary sources.
• No invented numbers. If we can’t find a fee, limit or date in a public source, we say so (“not published”, “check with the harbor”) instead of estimating it.
• Prices are published rates, not DockDash prices. Cost guides show rates that businesses publish on their own websites, with the business named, the region and the date we read it. We say how many rates a range is based on.
• Reading only. We research from public pages. We don’t submit forms or create accounts to get information.
• No copied reviews, no made-up experts. We don’t republish reviews from other sites. Pages are bylined “DockDash team” until named reviewers with real credentials review them.

How we cite

A numbered link after a statement points to the source list at the bottom of the page. Each source lists its publisher, title, the date on the document when there is one, and the date we last read it. Secondary sources are marked.

What our dates mean

Last reviewed

The date someone last checked the page as a whole against its sources. We change it only after an actual review, never to make a page look fresh.

Last verified

On a single fact, such as a harbor permit fee: the date someone last re-read the source for that fact. Facts not re-checked in 180 days are flagged on the page so you know to confirm them.

Accessed

In a source list: the date we last read that source.

Published

When a page first went live, where shown.

General information, not advice

Our pages are general information. They are not legal, tax or insurance advice, and they can’t cover every harbor’s or policy’s details. Rules change. Before you rely on a rule or a number, confirm it with the harbor, the agency or your broker, accountant or attorney. Every guide ends with this reminder.

We don’t publish service agreement templates or liability waivers, because they need a lawyer who knows your business.

How we use AI

We use AI tools in our research and writing: to search for and summarize public sources, to draft pages and to check pages against their sources. AI can be wrong, so AI-assisted work is held to the same rules as everything else: every rule, fee and limit must trace to a cited source, and anything we could not confirm is labelled or left out. The DockDash team reviews pages before they are published.

Corrections

If something on a page is wrong or out of date, email support@dockdash.co with the page address and, if you can, a link to the source. We check the source, fix the page, update its “last reviewed” date and, for rule changes, add an entry to our rule changes tracker.

Independence

Providers can’t pay to be mentioned in our guides or to change what they say. How DockDash earns money is on its own page.