No more detention half measures: The time is now to charge for it and actually collect from shippers

Overdrive Radio

When we polled owner-operators about a year ago on recent-history improvement, or lack thereof, in detention time along their routes and at their customers, a huge majority noted the situation they'd seen at docks hadn’t improved to any noticeable degree in recent years. Forty percent of all poll respondents at the time in fact said detention had gotten worse for them: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15544369/how-to-calculate-detention-rate-for-owneroperator-business If the American Transportation Research Institute's new look at detention is correct, though, waits to load/unload are getting at least marginally better for the average driver out there, if not the majority of Overdrive’s largely independent owner-operator readers. In this week's Overdrive Radio edition, track back through Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole's reporting on ATRI's "Cost and consequences of truck driver detention" study: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15683714/how-detention-time-impacted-trucking-companies-drivers-in-2023 The ATRI study's topline finding estimated trucking writ large lost $15 billion to detention at shippers and receivers in 2023. Yes, $15 billion with a B. If you consider the American Trucking Associations' annual revenue figure for the entirety of the trucking industry at nearly a trillion (ATA's 2023 estimate was $987 billion), that $15 billion is worth a full 1.5% of the entire revenues generated by trucking companies. In the podcast, we break down the headline-grabbing numbers and how ATRI got to them with its 2023 detention-impacts estimate, likewise what owners and operators can do to put a dent in their own detention problems. Some of it’s obvious -- drop/hook situations, such as you can engineer them, will help -- but a lot is difficult, particularly the customer relations management that might truly make shippers and receivers feel the burden of their inefficiencies with detention fees charged. And then actually collected. As it stands today, trucking writ large tackles this issue by half measures, quite literally collecting invoiced detention fees only about half the time, ATRI found. More on the detention subject: **Recent OOIDA member survey: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15665203/ooida-member-surveys-on-detention-time-rates-deliver-ops-insight **FMCSA plans new study, quandary for owner-ops working with brokers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15638339/ownerops-weigh-in-on-fmcsas-detentiontime-study-efforts