Hi, there. My name is Matt Harrington, and I’m the director of truckload operations here at FreightPros. Today we’re going to talk about detention.
What is detention? Detention is the fee that a carrier assess when the truck is held beyond the free time allotted for loading or unloading the truck.
Typically, detention is more common when it comes to full truckload shipments, but yes you can be charged detention by an LTL carrier. Why do carriers charge detention? There’s an old adage in trucking that goes, when a truck isn’t moving it’s not making money. Every minute a truck sits idle at a shipper or reciever, is a minute of lost minute. In an effort to reduce that, to compensate for a driver’s time, they charge detention.
How long before detention starts? Typically in the truckload world, you get two hours at the shipper’s and two hours at the receiver before they start billing for detention.
There is detention in the LTL world, but there’s a greater variance on those times. Sometimes it’s fifteen minutes, sometimes it’s thirty minutes, sometimes the truck won’t stay and wait at all. Again, it is carrier dependent.
How much does detention cost? It can very from carrier to carrier, customer to customer, but typically ranges from fifty dollars an hour to one hundred dollars an hour. It can be negotiated ahead of time, if it’s known that the loading times are going to exceed two hours. How to avoid detention?
The first step is to plan ahead. Make sure the freight is prepped and ready to go as much as possible prior to the truck arriving.
Second step is to make sure the load paperwork is ready to go for the driver once he arrives.
The third step is to set a schedule and make sure everybody is communicating; the carrier, the broker, and both the shipper and receiver. This will make life a lot easier on everybody.
That’s about it when it comes to detention. If you have any questions check out our website, download our freight papers, read the blog, and for anything else feel free to contact us. My name is Matt Harrington, I’m the director of truckload operations here at FreightPros. Have a great day.