Detention Time in Trucking: What It Costs and How to Bill Detention Pay With GPS

Detention time in trucking is the time a driver waits at a shipper or receiver after the contract's free time for loading or unloading runs out, and the carrier can bill it as detention pay, usually at an hourly rate per truck. Two hours of free time is common. While the driver waits, the hours-of-service clock runs, the next load slips, and the truck earns nothing unless someone bills the detention. Research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that fleets get paid on fewer than half of the detention invoices they send, often because the only record is the driver's word against the receiver's.

The direct cost is the truck's hourly operating cost while it sits, plus the driver's time. The indirect cost hurts more. Lost hours come out of the driver's daily limit, so a two-hour hold at a dock can become a missed delivery window and a night away from home, and a receiver that habitually holds trucks ends up shaping your whole schedule. Fleets that measure detention by customer routinely find that a handful of accounts cause most of it.

Draw a geofence around the customer's yard in the telematics platform and it records the minute the truck entered and the minute it left, with the vehicle stationary in between. Trip replay shows the same on a map, with timestamps. A typical record: arrival 8:02, departure 10:47, two hours free, 45 minutes of detention. The platform produces it automatically for every stop and driver, and a receiver's own dock log can't contradict it. A month of detention reports by customer is the basis for a conversation with the account, or for repricing it.

Put the free time and the rate in the contract or the rate confirmation. Set up the geofences before the first load. Run the detention report weekly and attach the arrival and departure times to each invoice. Send chronic accounts to your sales team, not the driver. Fleets that keep this routine bill detention they used to let go, with a record the customer can check. High Point GPS configures customer geofences and detention reporting for carriers across Canada and the United States.

A timestamped record only turns into money when the contract says what it triggers. A workable detention clause names four things, and the telematics data backs each one.