Detention
Detention is the charge that applies when a carrier's truck and driver are held at a shipper or receiver beyond an agreed window of free time for loading or unloading. Most rate agreements allow a couple of hours to load or unload; for time past that, the carrier bills detention, usually at an hourly rate.
Why it exists
A driver sitting at a dock is not driving, and the clock that matters is not only the invoice. Time spent waiting eats into the driver's hours of service, the federal limit on how long they can legally drive that day. A long detention can turn a workable delivery schedule into an hours violation or a missed second appointment, which is why detention is contentious and why free-time terms are spelled out on the rate confirmation.
How it is documented
Detention claims turn on arrival and departure times, which is why check-in and check-out records, and the timestamps on the bill of lading, matter. Detention is one type of accessorial charge, the family of fees that sit on top of the base line-haul rate. It is a commercial matter between the parties on a load, separate from the federal safety and authority record.
A concrete case
A driver arrives for a 9 a.m. appointment with two hours of free time and is not unloaded until 2 p.m. That is three hours of billable detention, and it also burns roughly five hours against the driver's 14-hour on-duty window, which can push a planned second stop out of legal reach. The detention invoice is the visible cost; the schedule and hours pressure is the one that ripples into the next load and the next day.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.
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