A new study reveals the many downstream effects of detention time, including billions of dollars in lost revenue and negative impacts on highway safety and the environment.
Detention time is defined as time longer than two hours spent at a customer facility between scheduled arrival and actual departure. In its latest report, the American Transportation Research Institute did a deep dive into detention time’s costs and consequences for truck drivers. Its findings quantify what truckers have known and complained about for years, putting a price tag on the pervasive problem in the industry.
But the good news: Detention time is mostly down.
As a percentage of stops each year, incidents of two- to four-hour wait times went down from nearly 14% in 2014 to 5% in 2023, with wait times of more than four hours decreasing to 5% from 8% over the same period. However, short periods of detention – those lasting less than two hours – went from 24.5% to nearly 29.5%.
That’s pretty much it for the good news.
Detention time is worse for some drivers, depending on what kind of freight they haul.
More than half of stops with refrigerated freight included detention, the most among all sectors. Detention occurrences were lower for dry van freight (about a third of stops), flatbed (about a quarter of stops) and specialized freight (about one in five stops).
Shippers and receivers appear to value owner-operators’ time less than that of employee drivers. Short wait times (less than two hours) occurred in fewer than a quarter of stops for employee drivers and leased-on owner-operators. For owner-operators with their own authority, that number jumped to 31%.
For longer detention times, the situation was about the same across all employment types, with 3-5% of stops having wait times of two hours or more. Detention time was more prevalent with spot market freight (42.5%) compared to contract freight (34%).
Earlier this year, ATRI released a study looking into the challenges female truck drivers face – and it can now add detention time to that list. A larger percentage of stops for female drivers included wait time compared to stops made by male drivers. More than a third of female drivers’ stops included short waits (compared to 27% for male drivers), and detention time of two hours or more made up 15% of stops for female drivers (compared to only 10% for male drivers).
Costs of detention time
Given that detention time eats up hours that could be spent on the road, it costs drivers thousands of dollars and the industry billions of dollars each year.
Last year alone, 135 million productive hours were lost as a result of detention time. That breaks down to 15 days’ worth of hours-of-service time per driver. Translating that time to distance, individual truckers lost about 7,000 miles while waiting at customers’ facilities.
Given that most truckers get paid per mile, detention time resulted in $11,000 to $19,000 in lost annual revenue per driver. Industrywide, that amounted to about $11.5 billion. And that data includes only employee drivers, not owner-operators, who likely experienced greater losses due to more detention time.
Although most companies offer pay for detention time, it does not fully compensate for lost time and miles – with average revenue for an employee driver amounting to about $100. Fees for detention time are about $50 per hour but don’t kick in until the two-hour mark.
Even with detention time decreasing over the years, occurrences of wait times less than two hours are up. Since that time is not compensated, an uptick in smaller wait times could mean in increase in lost revenue. Furthermore, although about 75% of incidents of detention time are billed, only a little over half of these fees are actually paid.
Detention time makes other industry issues worse
Detention time also exacerbates other systemic industry issues, including truck parking, restroom access, emission, driver retention and highway safety.
A majority of survey respondents reported having run out of on-duty time at a facility due to detention time. Consequently, they have to park at the facility for the day, causing them to lose access to truck stop amenities like showers, laundry and even food.
And parking at a facility is a best-case scenario. According to ATRI’s study, drivers reported that half of their customers do not allow parking at the facility while waiting to be loaded or unloaded. In those cases, truckers are forced to waste more time finding parking in potentially unsafe areas.
Another issue is bathroom access. Drivers indicated that about 44% of customers’ facilities do not allow them to use the restroom during detention time.
More than three-quarters of customer facilities do not provide any waiting area at all. Currently in Congress, the Trucker Bathroom Access Act would require shipper and receiver facilities to make employee restrooms accessible to truck drivers.
In addition, detention time means more idling and more driving when searching for parking, which means wasting more fuel. Each year, drivers waste 70-80 gallons of fuel while waiting. Fuel loss more than doubles to 167.5 gallons for refrigerated trailers. That may be a few hundred bucks per driver, but the industry as a whole is losing tens of millions of gallons of fuel at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some drivers are getting so fed up with detention time that they are quitting their jobs. More than a third of truckers have left a driving job due to excessive or undercompensated detention time.
Those who remain in the profession have to make up for that lost time somehow. Unfortunately, they are doing so by driving at higher speeds – with detained truckers driving nearly 15% faster (49.5 mph average) than non-detained drivers (43 mph average).
Solutions
While there are some things truckers can do to mitigate the effects of detention time, the options are slim and not always available.
ATRI recommends carriers negotiate fees for detention time, including higher rates for excessively long wait times. However, that is not always practicable when working through a broker or leased on to a company. Negotiating fees is also difficult during periods of overcapacity, which the industry is currently experiencing.
A potential workaround for avoiding detention time is arriving early to be first in line, but some facilities may not allow early arrivals. Another option is to look for drop-and-hook loads, which are much less likely to include time waiting around to be loaded and unloaded.
Then there is action through inaction, i.e. no longer working with customers who consistently make drivers wait. According to ATRI, the threshold for carriers to start refusing loads is when at least half of stops involve detention time.
Past and future studies
ATRI’s detention time study is just the latest looking into the widespread problem, with at least one more on the horizon.
Earlier this year, the OOIDA Foundation released results from an Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association member survey addressing detention time. This survey found that drivers were spending 14 hours per week in detention. Although significant, that length of time was down compared to previous years – a finding that aligns with ATRI’s latest study.
The federal government also recognizes the problem of detention time. In February, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officially began the process to study the issue. Titled “Impact of Driver Detention Time on Safety and Operations,” the study was commissioned by Congress in 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and is still in the early data-collection phases. LL
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