Detention is charged when a driver waits at a pickup or delivery location beyond the carrier's free time — typically two hours. After free time expires, detention accrues at an hourly rate published in the tariff. The clock starts from the driver's appointment time or arrival time, whichever is later.
The charge is almost always caused by shipper or consignee operations, not by the carrier: dock understaffed at appointment time, freight not staged and ready, dock congestion delaying door assignment, or paperwork not ready when the driver arrives.
Detention also affects transit, not just the invoice. A driver who waits two hours at origin has consumed two hours of their legal driving window under Hours of Service regulations. Those hours cannot be recovered. On tight lanes, a detained driver may run out of available service hours before completing the delivery, adding a full day to transit.
Carriers who experience chronic detention on a shipper's freight eventually reprice the lane or deprioritize capacity offers. Managing dwell time is both a cost control and a capacity access issue.
For sourced industry data on detention rates and their impact on driver pay, see conmitto.io/resources/truck-detention-statistics. For how detention is billed, disputed, and avoided, see the detention guide.