Almost Every Fleet Bills for Detention. Fewer Than Half the Invoices Get Paid: What the Data Says About Time at the Dock

Almost Every Fleet Bills for Detention. Fewer Than Half the Invoices Get Paid.

What the Data Says About Time at the Dock, and What It Takes to Prove It

Infographic: truck driver detention. Drivers were detained at 39.3 percent of stops in 2023, detention cost the industry 15.1 billion dollars, and fewer than half of detention invoices get paid.

The appointment was for 7:00 AM. The driver checked in at 6:52. The truck pulled out, loaded, at 10:40.

That is three hours and forty-eight minutes of a truck, a trailer, and a driver tied up at one facility, most of it sitting in a lot, burning the hours of service clock and producing nothing. Past the two hour free time in the contract, it is billable. The carrier sends the detention invoice.

And then the shipper's receiving log says the truck arrived at 8:15.

Detention is one of the few costs in trucking that the carrier is entitled to recover and routinely does not. The reason is rarely that the time was not real. It is that nobody can prove when the clock started.

How Often It Happens

The American Transportation Research Institute published a comprehensive study of truck driver detention in September 2024, based on 2023 data. Drivers reported being detained at 39.3 percent of all stops (ATRI, "Costs and Consequences of Truck Driver Detention: A Comprehensive Analysis," September 2024).

It is worse in some segments than others. Refrigerated trailer operators were detained at 56.2 percent of stops, and spot market fleets at 42.5 percent. Across sectors, drivers lost between 117 and 209 hours to detention over the year.

Add it up across for-hire trucking and ATRI put total detention at more than 135 million hours in 2023.

What It Costs

ATRI estimated the 2023 cost of detention at $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity, a combined $15.1 billion (ATRI, September 2024).

An earlier federal analysis reached the same conclusion from a different direction. The U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General, in a January 2018 report, estimated that detention is associated with $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion a year in reduced earnings for for-hire drivers in the truckload sector, which works out to between $1,281 and $1,534 per driver per year. For truckload motor carriers, it estimated detention reduces net income by $250.6 million to $302.9 million annually (DOT OIG, Report No. ST2018019, January 31, 2018).

The OIG report is eight years old and relied on dwell time data from FMCSA's 2014 detention study, so treat its dollar figures as a floor from an earlier market rather than a current estimate. The direction of both studies is the same.

It Is a Safety Problem, Not Just a Billing Problem

The OIG report's most cited finding is about crashes, not money. It estimated that a 15 minute increase in average dwell time, the total time a truck spends at a facility, increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2 percent. Applied to the entire freight-hauling sector, it estimated such an increase would have been expected to produce an additional 6,509 crashes in 2013, the year of its crash data. Separately, each 5 percentage point increase in the share of stops experiencing detention was associated with a 4.7 percent increase in expected crash rates (DOT OIG, 2018).

ATRI's 2024 study found the mechanism you would expect. Trucks that had been detained drove 14.6 percent faster on average than trucks that had not been, and trucks headed to facilities where detention was expected also ran faster on the way in (ATRI, September 2024).

The hours of service clock does not stop while a driver waits at a dock. Every hour lost there is an hour the driver is trying to make back on the road.

Billed on Nearly Every Load, Paid on Fewer Than Half

This is the number that should bother a carrier the most. ATRI found that 94.5 percent of fleets charge detention fees, but fewer than 50 percent of those invoices are paid (ATRI, September 2024).

Some of that is leverage. A shipper with freight to give can decline a detention charge and dare the carrier to push. But a meaningful part of it is evidence. A detention invoice is a claim about time, and the shipper usually has its own record of that time, kept by the shipper.

When the two records disagree, the one with a timestamp tends to win. When only one side has a timestamp, the argument is over before it starts.

Nobody Records the First Two Hours

The OIG report identified the root problem in one sentence. Accurate industrywide data on detention does not exist, it said, "because most industry stakeholders measure only time spent at a shipper or receiver's facility beyond the limit established in shipping contracts, often 2 hours." It went on: "Commercial drivers and carriers do not capture time spent waiting prior to reaching the contractual threshold" (DOT OIG, 2018).

That is the whole problem in miniature. Detention is calculated from arrival time. If the carrier's record of arrival is a driver's recollection or a handwritten note, and the facility's record is a gate log, the gate log sets the start of the clock. Every minute between when the truck actually pulled in and when the gate log says it did is a minute the carrier gives away.

As an illustration, not a survey figure: on the load in the opening, the driver's actual wait was 3 hours and 48 minutes, or 1 hour and 48 minutes past two hours of free time. If the facility's log shows arrival at 8:15, the billable time shrinks to 25 minutes, and the rest of the dispute is one party's memory against the other's paperwork.

What to Do About It

1. Record arrival independently of the facility. The single most important timestamp in a detention claim is when your truck arrived. It should come from your side, automatically, not from the facility's gate log.

2. Record departure the same way. The end of the clock matters as much as the start. An arrival and a departure from the same independent source is a clean interval nobody has to reconstruct.

3. Capture the time before free time runs out. The OIG's point was that the industry mostly stops measuring below the contractual threshold. Measure all of it. Your dwell time data is how you find out which customers are the problem.

4. Attach the record to the invoice. A detention charge with a timestamped arrival and departure attached is a different document than one without. Make it the default, not something you dig up when a charge gets disputed.

5. Use the data at rate time. A customer that holds your trucks at half its stops is a customer whose rate should reflect it. You can only have that conversation with the numbers in hand.

6. Watch your trailers, too. In drop-and-hook freight, the trailer sits at the customer while the tractor leaves. Knowing when a trailer arrived, how long it sat, and when it left is its own record, and trailers are the part of the fleet with no power of their own.

Where Alertrax Fits

Alertrax is not a detention billing system and it does not collect anything for you. What it produces is the independent, automatic arrival and departure record that detention claims depend on, on the tractor, the trailer, or both.

Alertrax works on the equipment most tracking hardware skips, including trailers that have no power source.

  • Geofence Alerts: Draw a boundary around a shipper or receiver once. Every arrival and departure is timestamped automatically, from your side, without the driver having to remember to log it.
  • Automatic Time-on-Site Logging: The dwell time at each facility, recorded as it happens. Over a few weeks, that becomes the list of which customers hold your trucks and for how long.
  • Live Tracking in the Fleet Portal: Every tracked tractor and trailer on one map in the Alertrax Fleet Portal, with location updates every 2 minutes.
  • One-Year Battery, No Wiring Required: Alertrax runs on two AA cells. No wiring into a trailer's light circuit, no installation appointment, which is what makes it practical on a drop trailer.
  • Shareable Tracking Link: Send a customer or a broker a live link, with no login required, so the question of where the truck is and when it got there is settled before it becomes a dispute.
  • 100% Waterproof, Covert Magnetic Mounting: Mounts to a steel frame in seconds and survives life on a trailer.
  • iOS and Android App: Check arrival times and send links from a phone.

If you run a trucking or logistics operation, our trucking and logistics page covers how fleets like yours use it.

Pricing

You can equip your fleet with Alertrax for a low monthly rate, no long-term contracts, no hidden fees.

(Want to own it outright? We offer a $599 Lifetime option for permanent, subscription-free tracking.)

Weigh that against a single detention invoice that gets paid because the arrival time was not up for debate.

Sources

American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), "Costs and Consequences of Truck Driver Detention: A Comprehensive Analysis," and accompanying release, September 10, 2024, based on 2023 data, retrieved September 2026: drivers detained at 39.3 percent of all stops; 56.2 percent for refrigerated trailer operators; 42.5 percent for spot market fleets; 117 to 209 hours of detention per driver per year depending on sector; more than 135 million hours of detention in for-hire trucking in 2023; $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity, $15.1 billion combined; 94.5 percent of fleets charge detention fees, fewer than 50 percent of those invoices paid; detained trucks drove 14.6 percent faster on average
U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General (OIG), "Estimates Show Commercial Driver Detention Increases Crash Risks and Costs, but Current Data Limit Further Analysis," Report No. ST2018019, January 31, 2018, retrieved September 2026: 15 minute increase in average dwell time associated with a 6.2 percent increase in expected crash rate and an estimated 6,509 additional crashes in 2013; 5 percentage point increase in stops experiencing detention associated with a 4.7 percent increase in expected crash rate; $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in reduced annual earnings for for-hire truckload drivers, $1,281 to $1,534 per driver per year; $250.6 million to $302.9 million annual reduction in truckload carrier net income; statement that stakeholders generally measure only time beyond the contractual limit, often 2 hours, and do not capture time before that threshold. Note: this report is from 2018 and relies on dwell time data from FMCSA's 2014 detention study.

This article is provided for general informational purposes and is not legal, contractual, or financial advice. AlerTrax is a GPS tracking company, not a billing service, freight broker, or law firm. Whether detention is billable, how it is calculated, and what documentation a customer will accept depend on your contracts and rate confirmations. The detention example above is an illustration, not survey data. Consult your contracts and a qualified advisor on detention terms and disputes.

Start the Clock From Your Side

Detention is time that actually happened, it is billable time, and it is one of the few costs a carrier can actually recover. Most of it is lost not because it did not happen, but because the only timestamp anyone can point to belongs to the other party.

Record your own arrivals. Record your own departures. Attach them to the invoice. The fleets that get paid for detention are, more often than not, the ones that can prove it.

Visit www.buyalertrax.com today and put an independent arrival and departure record on every truck and trailer in your fleet.