It’s time to ship the goods. Who does the shipping lead call?
Shipping departments will sometimes tell brokers not to put a load on a load board. The shipper doesn’t want just any trucker hauling their loads. I respect that because these are the shippers I want to work for. They recognize the value of the transportation industry. They’re willing to pay for the best service they can afford.
I get dozens of emails a day looking for truckers to haul loads. Most of them I find we can handle. There are always a few that I wonder if I want to handle… just like there are a few truckers I don’t want to work with again.
Sally’s Story
Sally has been driving for several years now. Back in June, she arrived when she was scheduled, but the load wasn’t ready. Finally, the shipping office told her, “Come back tomorrow morning. We get off in 15 minutes.”
So Sally spent an extra night just to get the load first thing the next morning. She’d already committed her time and fuel to pick up this load. Giving up meant finding another load and taking a loss on the deadhead miles.
In 2019, OOIDA published a 15 page report on detention pay. According to their surveys, 36% of drivers wait 11 to 20 hours per week for loads to be loaded or unloaded.
The trucking industry has traditionally defined detention as any time spent waiting to load or unload in excess of two hours, thereby if a driver spends five hours waiting to load at a dock, the first two hours would be considered free, while the remaining three would be classified as detention. Although members indicated that shippers and receivers utilize this customary definition in general, they presented additional definitions for detention time, which included anything in excess of a half hour to an hour and all time spent at a pick-up or delivery location, including when their truck first enters the yard. – 2019 Detention Time Survey
Breaking Down Detention Pay
The trucker gets in trouble when a shipment is late.
Several members commented that while they are often penalized by a shipper or receiver if they are late for their pick-up or delivery time, shippers and receivers ought to be held accountable for breaking appointment times. – 2019 Detention Time Survey
When shippers fail to honor detention pay, drivers aren’t the only ones who suffer. It’s not only about the money. Look at it this way: if a driver is forced to wait to load or unload, they get behind schedule and may push harder to make up the time. They’ll skip rest breaks or park in unsafe locations if they run out of hours. Drivers have enough stress without this added headache.
Surprisingly, truckers have mixed feelings about trying to collect detention pay. For instance, in past surveys conducted by OOIDA, 52% of respondents indicate that they always attempt to collect detention pay. However, most of the remaining 48% believe they won’t receive it no matter how hard they try.
An independent owner-operator can choose just not pick up loads for a shipper who has failed to either load the freight in a timely way or who fails to pay detention fees. A leased-on trucker may not have that right. Failure to pay detention fees means the driver is really working for free. Even the rates that many shippers will pay for detention are low – too low.
This can translate to thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Load boards such as the DAT load board or freeload boards may be of some assistance in helping drivers avoid detention. But, things happen. Ultimately, the shipper is the primary culprit in charge of ruining a driver’s week, and they should be willing to compensate.
Detention Pay: It’s All About Time
When a trucker agrees to take a load or a fleet manager assigns it, both recognize that there’s a time element in the shipping. The trucker wants the delivery done as quickly as possible so the invoice can be sent and paid and the next load loaded and moved. Profit is made when a load gets moved as fast as possible.
Sometimes brokers or fleet managers will even tell the trucker the appointment time is earlier than the shipper’s schedule, just to be sure that the truck is there on time. Truckers want to be there on time or earlier. Delays in picking up a load from the dock cost trucker money.
Why Detention Pay Matters
Drivers probably suffer the most when it comes to detention, but other customers and the driver’s company can feel the ill effects as well. Why? Think about it this way: if a driver has to wait for hours at a loading dock, he’s agitated and tired. Plus, he may have other loads on his truck that need to be delivered. So he’s getting behind and getting really stewed about it. His frustration can manifest in reckless driving as he attempts to make up lost time, with an accident being the ultimate price.
Detaining a driver can have repercussions down the line. Although there are truckers who refuse to haul for those customers who repeatedly detain drivers, it doesn’t truly solve the problem. Those customers simply find another trucker or another company to haul their goods.
How long and how much?
Typically, detention pay trucking standards dictate that trucks must be loaded within two hours. After that, the shipper is expected to pay from $25 to $100 for each hour the driver is kept waiting over the limit. However, this fee doesn’t always make up for the costs already incurred. According to DOT, drivers lose about $1 billion or more in pay each year because of detention. So, if you’re asking what is detention pay and does it matter, the answer is, yes, detention pay matters. A lot.
Why? To put it in the simplest terms: ELD.
Now that we’ve got electronic logbooks tracking the truckers, there’s no downtime. A trucker is on duty, regardless of driving or sitting in a dock until the clock that stops at 14 hours. On duty means the trucker is working. There’s simply no give in the rulebook. At 14 hours, the trucker is supposed to stop the truck, regardless of how many actual miles have been driven or how many hours were on the road.
The shipper doesn’t really care too much about time because, from their perspective, the driver isn’t hired yet. They think only about the driver’s time from the time the truck pulls away from their dock until it arrives at the destination. They think the trucker is going to deliver in exactly the time that Google Maps says it will take to drive there. If a trucker has wasted 6 hours in the dock, they only have 8 more hours on the clock. That may not be enough to make the delivery. Who do they blame? Not the shipping crew.
Detention pay is the penalty the shipper will pay for calling in a trucker for a pickup and making the trucker wait. There’s a difference between 10 minutes while the load gets wrapped up or stacked on a pallet, and waiting hours because the request called for the trucker to arrive too soon. In Sally’s case, she opted to stay overnight and pick up the load the next morning. The penalty to the shipper: a $75 detention fee that the trucking company means to collect and send on to her. Does that cover the 11 hours she waited to get the load? Barely.
Time Constraints
There are lots of loads out there that don’t have a time issue. A driver might have the option of flexing her time, picking up the load, and dropping at her convenience rather than having a set time for pick up and delivery. But with smartphones and load boards, there’s an expectation of pick-up appointments and delivery times being met. The shipper doesn’t care about the trucker’s HOS. They just want the delivery done as quicly as possible.
A lot of times, these shippers are looking for the cheapest trucker they can find. What they do find is a cheap trucker – who might bail out on the load due to “mechanical difficulties” or a “breakdown.” Those mechanical difficulties may be a trucker who isn’t making enough money to keep his rig in good shape, or the breakdown may be another load with more money just turned up for the trucker to take instead.
For a shipper like this, they have to switch to plan B, whatever that is. Find another trucker and go from there.
What if the driver doesn’t have a plan B?
A late load steals time from the road. It can make the driver late for her delivery. Like dominoes, one late load can topple a week’s worth of scheduling. That ruins reputations and may build up fines. The next shipper doesn’t care why the trucker is late, only that the trucker is late.
This is why there are some companies that I just don’t want to deal with. They don’t treat me or my drivers with respect. They will change the paperwork and lie and never pay the detention fees. I don’t want to put my drivers in the position of being promised a detention fee and not getting it. I don’t want them to get a bad reputation down the road because this one shipper always makes the truckers wait.
ELD for the win?
If a trucker is dealing with a late loading or delayed delivery, the ELD can often help support the claim for the detention pay. A shipper who claims that the truck arrived late may have to face the evidence that the truck was there and waited in the parking lot for the shipping crew to get to them.
Sally is still waiting for her detention pay four months later. That’s just wrong. The government rules regarding on-duty hours plus the ability the shippers have to just ignore the detention fees put the truckers in the middle of a very tight squeeze.
That’s why I ignore some shippers who send me an email looking for a trucker. I want customers who respect us, pay a fair amount for a load, and treat us well.
I totally agree and I really think that us truckers should strike to get these types of unjustly acts from getting taken away from our well- deserved pay. We are the ones on the roads rushing our lives, staying away from loved ones, family activities and such! Not anyone else. Let’s get something done about this!!
Faze
Indeed
I agree I sat for 8 hours the broker told me they were starting detention ! The company I work for never paid me detention ! Did they keep it for themselves? I was the one sitting waiting ! Is this legal? 402-739-1458 if anyone has the answer let me know.
Is TRUCK LOAD DETENTION FEE IS APPLICABLE IN THE PHILIPPINES LOGISTICS?
If carriers paid drivers by the hour, carriers would eat at least 8 hours a week in pay. A large carrier with over 100 trucks would go bankrupt.
Man I highly agree the FMCSA make rules against truckers but never for us and we should strike
Got here sat. Load didn’t get over Mexican border yest.9 hours detention all the company pays(for 2 drivers 1099) went back 9am sat till 2pm still no show, but no more detention pay. Hopefully Tom the load shows. Trying to get home for Christmas, won’t have a pay check with this many days off… won’t be accepting any more load out of Laredo.
I had to take 2 shippers to small claims court. Got my money after I threatened to lein their property. Blacklisted there but don’t care, they do dirty so don’t want to haul there anymore anyways
I hall Frack sand in the oil field. Sometimes we are waiting 8 to 10 hours to unload. Is there a law that I can show our company so we can get detention pay
I ship a lot of freight. This charge is complete BS! We get drivers that charge the is fee regardless if they are held up or not. Some drivers even try to claim that the charge is for the time it takes to unload not the time delayed before being unloaded. I would agree completely that if your appt if for 3pm and I dont get you in until 6pm that I should pay. But otherwise im not paying that BS charge.
Yes, it should on be when the truck is delayed. Schedules are tight sometimes and any delay has a cascading effect on the next appointments for the truck.
8/20/23
This is a horror story, but I think I found a solution that works like magic!
I was hauling a Purina dog food load to Kroger Peyton Distribution center in Bluffton IN. The Purina mfg plant took over 5 hours to load me, so I couldn’t reach my delivery appointment on time to get unloaded. At the Kroger delivery locaton, they said they couldn’t squeeze me in and that my new appointment time was for 6 days away, but I could wait in the overflow parking off the property next door and email some person to try and get me unloaded sooner. I sat in the overflow parking area and waited over 18 hours with no reply from anyone. I tried, my broker tried, my dispatcher tried, and nothing, no response from anyone about getting unloaded.
While waiting, I talked to some of the other truckers sitting in the lot and some said they had been sitting there for 3 days! So, at 3 am that next morning, when the place was quiet, but still open and taking deliveries, I drove over to see if they could squeeze me in. I explained my situation to the girl in the guard shack and she made a phone call to receiving. The reply was sorry, we’re not allowed to do that, to squeeze you in, but you can try back in the morning after 8am when the managers are here. I said thank you and left. I returned again that same morning at 8am. But, I got the same reply at the security shack. Sorry, our hands are tied, we’re booked solid for the next 5 days and we can’t unload you, you’ll have to leave and come back at the scheduled appointment time – move along. At that point, frustrated, I said, no, I’m not going anywhere until you get a manager or somebody down here so we can figure this out, I’m not waiting here for 5 more days. Get me a door to unload, I’m in the trucking business not the temporary storage business. You guys ordered this stuff and I’m here to deliver it. My part of the contract is complete. It wasn’t my fault Purina took 5 hours to load me which made me miss my original appointment time. Then they said you can’t just sit here blocking our entry gate so no other trucks can get in, you’re trespassing, we’ll have to call the police. I said wrong, I can sit here, and I’m not moving, I want the police to come, I want to create a big scene, then maybe a manager will get down here and we can correct this issue. And technically I said, this is your product and I want it off of my trailer, so I have every right to be on this property until that is done. You’re holding my trailer hostage until it’s unloaded. During this whole time, I was being nice and cordial during the confrontation with security explaining I need a resolution to this problem. I’ve asked nicely and you’ve refused to help me, so now you’ve forced me to do it this way.
This is a very busy location with trucks constantly checking in, but not now. No trucks are getting by and they are backing up onto the street. I’m blocking everything. When the police arrive 15 to 20 minutes later, 4 or 5 managers also come outside. The pissed manager lady asks me to please move my truck so other trucks can get in. I comply, and park my truck over to the side so other trucks can get through. I then explain again the situation to everyone there. I couldn’t control missing the appointment time, I’ve sat here for 24 hours and have been ignored. Some guys have been sitting for 3 days over in the parking area waiting to get unloaded. They can’t expect me to wait here for 5 more days. I’ve got a wife, kids, mortgage, their costing me $500 a day. I’m not their temporary storage solution. I can’t use my trailer with their product in it, I want it off my truck. Unload me or give me a manager’s signature denying the load and I’ll return it to Purina.
The police weren’t saying anything, but the pissed manager lady went into the guard shack and got on the phone. When she came back out, she handed me a map on a piece of paper and told me I could go get unloaded at a nearby facility of theirs. She also said “this wasn’t the right way to solve this issue”. Then I said “hey, I tried but It was you guys that didn’t leave me any other options”. I drove down the street to the other facility (it was right *^%$# nearby) and I was unloaded within the hour. I don’t care how good the money seems; I won’t be delivering to this location ever again.
To conclude: this is a grey area, so I’m going to talk to an attorney. I want to find out where I stand legally in a situation like this. Regardless of any appointment time, their product is sitting on my trailer and I can’t use it until it’s unloaded. Have I fulfilled my contract obligation once I’m on their property? And if I’ve waited a reasonable amount of time, do I have a legal right to force them to unload me or provide me with a paper denying the delivery?
Glad that you got unloaded. We had a similar situation at a Sam’s Club warehouse several years ago. These big warehouses have to allow for an occasional work in unloading appointment.
I think we all have or will experience situations like this. You have explained it very well. All the way to the $500 day needed (After Diesel). I have looked the other way for so many years. This week I have been calling Brokers for last weeks delivery to find out about my Detention that was promised to me. And I will not let go. They are using the technique of silence and avoidance hopping I will go away and stop. With loading and unloading taking more than 2 hours and leaving us waiting on nasty warehouse grounds the trucking gig does not work. Someone is profiting from all this. The truck driver/owner is not.
Please let me know what you find out legally. I just started this fight and need to know what I can do.
Thank you
We have one truck and are having heck getting the broker to pay up on 11 hours of detention. That is after the 2 hour grace period. They want to pay us a layover fee which is only for 5 hours. I sent the broker the definition of Detention pay. And it is not a layover at all. We were connected to their dock for 13 hours. How are we supposed to know the broker didn’t bill the shipper and pocket the money.