What Is Detention Pay in Trucking?
Detention pay is compensation a carrier earns when a shipper or consignee holds a truck beyond the contractually allowed free time — typically two hours. Once free time expires, the carrier is entitled to an hourly detention rate specified in the rate confirmation for every additional hour the truck is held. The purpose of detention pay is to compensate drivers and carriers for lost productivity when shippers create delays outside the carrier’s control.
How Detention Pay Works
Detention pay follows a straightforward logic:
- The broker and carrier agree on a pickup or delivery time in the rate confirmation
- The rate confirmation specifies a free time allowance — usually two hours — during which the shipper can load or unload without triggering additional charges
- If the truck is still at the facility after free time expires, detention begins accruing at the agreed hourly rate
- The carrier invoices the broker for the detention, who typically passes the charge back to the shipper
In practice, the process breaks down between steps 3 and 4. Carriers know detention happened. They frequently can’t prove it well enough to collect payment.
What Counts as Detention Time
Detention begins when:
- The truck arrives at the scheduled appointment time and cannot be loaded/unloaded within the free time allowance
- The truck is ready but no dock is available
- The facility is running behind and keeps the truck waiting for a door assignment
What typically does NOT count as detention:
- Time the truck arrived early (unless the rate confirmation specifies otherwise)
- Driver breaks taken voluntarily while waiting
- Delays caused by the carrier’s own issues
Important nuance: Some rate confirmations specify that free time begins at “door assignment” rather than at facility arrival. This matters — a truck can sit in the staging lot for two hours before even receiving a door assignment, and under this language, the detention clock wouldn’t start until the door is assigned. Always read the free time language carefully.
How Much Is Detention Pay?
Detention pay rates vary by load type, broker, and negotiated terms, but general industry ranges are:
| Load Type | Typical Detention Rate |
|---|---|
| Dry van | $50–$75 per hour |
| Refrigerated (reefer) | $75–$100 per hour |
| Flatbed | $50–$75 per hour |
| Hazmat / specialized | $75–$150+ per hour |
These are negotiated rates — what’s actually collectible depends on what your rate confirmation specifies. If the RC doesn’t include a detention rate, you’re in a weaker position, though some carriers successfully bill at “standard” rates even without explicit RC coverage.
For reefer carriers, the stakes are especially high. ATRI’s 2024 Detention Study found refrigerated carriers experience detention on 56.2% of all stops — nearly 1 in 2 — compared to the 39.3% average across all freight types.
The Detention Pay Problem: Why Carriers Don’t Collect
Detention pay represents an enormous amount of money that carriers are owed but don’t collect. The ATRI 2024 study estimated the total cost of detention to the trucking industry at approximately $15 billion annually — including $3.6 billion in direct driver pay expense and $11.5 billion in lost productivity from delayed loads.
Despite this, fewer than 50% of detention invoices are actually paid. The reasons are consistent across carriers of all sizes:
Documentation gaps. Most carriers document detention with driver notes and dispatcher timestamps — evidence that’s easy for brokers to challenge. “Your truck arrived at 1:45, not 12:15” is all a broker needs to say to dispute a driver-written timestamp. Without GPS-verified data, the carrier has no counter.
Missed claim windows. Rate confirmations typically require detention invoices within 24–72 hours of delivery. Busy dispatch teams miss these windows constantly, and once the window closes, the claim is contractually barred.
No follow-up process. A single invoice submission with no follow-up often goes nowhere. Brokers have large payables queues; unpursued invoices age out.
Fear of damaging broker relationships. Some carriers are reluctant to push hard on detention with brokers they want to keep working with. This concern is often misplaced — billing for what’s contractually owed isn’t adversarial, and brokers who routinely refuse legitimate claims are the ones worth identifying.
Who Ultimately Pays Detention?
In a typical brokered load, the money flows like this:
Carrier → bills broker → broker bills shipper
The broker is the carrier’s contractual counterparty. The carrier invoices the broker, and the broker — if they choose to — passes the charge back to the shipper. The carrier’s legal relationship is with the broker, not the shipper.
This matters because some carriers mistakenly believe they need to coordinate with the shipper directly on detention. You don’t. Your rate confirmation is with the broker, and that’s who you invoice.
Detention Pay vs. Free Time: What’s the Difference?
Free time is the period specified in the rate confirmation during which the carrier is expected to load or unload without additional charge — typically two hours.
Detention pay is the compensation owed once free time expires. Detention pay is the remedy for excessive free time.
Some carriers confuse free time with a two-hour grace period during which they can bill nothing. That’s not correct. Free time is the contractually agreed time for the shipper to complete the load/unload operation. If the shipper exceeds it, detention pay is owed from the moment free time expires, not from some arbitrary later point.
How to Improve Detention Collection
The single most impactful change most carriers can make is replacing manual timestamps with GPS-verified documentation. Carriers who submit telematics data — GPS arrival/departure times corroborated by ELD records — see collection rates go from under 50% to over 80%.
The evidence removes the broker’s ability to dispute the timestamps. Two independent, hardware-stamped data sources are the standard accepted in TIA arbitration and FMCSA dispute processes.
Beyond documentation, building a consistent submission and follow-up process — submitting within 24 hours of delivery, following up at 7, 15, and 30 days — catches the operational gaps that let invoices die in billing queues.
Related Articles
- How to Calculate Detention Pay Owed
- How to Collect Detention Pay From a Broker (Step-by-Step)
- What Evidence Do You Need to Win a Detention Dispute?
- Detention Pay Rates by Load Type (2026)
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