Detention in Trucking: What It Is and How to Get Paid for It

Detention is the time a truck waits at a shipper or receiver beyond the agreed free window — and the money owed for that time. It is one of the most common accessorials in freight, and one of the most commonly written off, because most of it is never documented well enough to collect.

The mechanics are simple. A truck arrives for its appointment. The facility gets a free window — usually two hours — to load or unload. After that, the clock runs at an hourly rate, and the carrier is owed for every hour the truck sits. Simple to describe, expensive to ignore: a driver stuck four hours at a dock is a driver not earning on the next load.

How the free window works

Two hours is the most common free window, but it is not a law — it’s a term, and it belongs on the rate confirmation. If the rate con doesn’t state the free time and the hourly rate, there is no agreement to enforce, and the detention claim is an argument instead of an invoice. Always confirm the term at intake, before the truck arrives.

Detention vs. layover

These are different accessorials for different situations. Detention is paid by the hour for same-day waiting after the free window. Layover applies when the truck is held overnight — typically because loading or unloading can’t happen the same day — and is billed as a flat daily rate. A truck that waits three hours is detention; a truck told to come back tomorrow is layover.

Why most detention goes unpaid

Detention claims don’t fail on principle. They fail on documentation. The broker can’t bill the shipper for detention they can’t prove, so a claim without records simply dies on the desk. The carriers that consistently collect detention are not better negotiators — they’re better at capturing three timestamps:

• Arrival / in-gate. When the truck reached the facility — ideally a geofence crossing, not a number the driver remembers later.
• Check-in. When the driver actually checked in at the dock or guard shack.
• Departure / out-gate. When the truck left, closing the clock.

With those three, detention is arithmetic and the claim is an invoice. Without them, it is the driver’s word against the facility’s, and the driver loses.

How to actually get paid for detention

• Get the term in writing. Free time and hourly rate on the rate con, confirmed at intake. No term, no claim.
• Capture the timestamps automatically.A geofence in-gate and out-gate beats a driver’s recollection every time, because it’s a record, not a memory.
• Flag it while the truck is still there.Detention surfaced at the dock, while the driver can still document it, is collectible. Detention discovered at billing, three days later, usually isn’t.
• Bill it with the load.Attach the timestamps to the detention line and invoice it alongside the line haul, so it isn’t the thing everyone forgets.

Where it fits in the load lifecycle

Detention is really a visibility problem wearing a billing costume. It is won or lost during the visibility and exception jobs — at the dock, in real time — not at settlement. The role of a TMS here is to flag dwell as it happens, capture the in-gate and out-gate without anyone asking, and carry those timestamps straight onto the invoice. That turns detention from money you write off into money you collect.