Detention and Accessorials: The Money Most Carriers Never Bill
The hours are real, the contract allows it, and it still doesn't get invoiced — because nothing captured it at the moment it happened.
A driver arrives at a shipper at 08:00 for an 08:30 appointment. He is loaded and out at 13:40.
Free time was two hours. That is roughly three hours of detention, billable at $65 an hour under the customer's own rate agreement.
It never gets invoiced, because nobody wrote down the arrival time and by Thursday the driver is three states away and cannot remember it precisely.
Multiply that across a fleet and it is one of the largest recoverable line items in a small carrier's business.
Why it goes uncollected
Nothing captured the times. Arrival and departure existed only in the driver's head, or in a text to dispatch that scrolled away.
Nobody was watching the clock. Free time expired at 10:30 and nothing flagged it. By the time anybody thought about detention, the load was delivered.
Notification requirements were missed. Many rate agreements require the customer to be notified while the driver is still sitting. Bill it three days later and the customer can decline on process grounds, correctly.
Invoicing is a separate job. By the time someone builds the invoice, the accessorials are a reconstruction exercise from memory, and reconstruction under time pressure means the smaller items get dropped.
Nobody wants the argument. A dispatcher who values the relationship quietly decides not to bill three hours. Do that consistently and you have taught the customer their appointments do not matter.
What has to be true to bill it
The requirements are unglamorous and they are all about the moment, not the invoice.
Arrival and departure captured automatically. Geofenced arrival is best — the truck enters the shipper's radius and the clock starts without the driver doing anything. Manual entry works if the app makes it two taps, but anything requiring effort at a gate will be skipped.
Free time known per customer, per stop type. Two hours at a shipper and one at a receiver is not universal. It lives in the rate agreement and it has to live in the system.
An alert before the clock expires, not after. Dispatch should know at 10:15 that free time runs out at 10:30, so the notification goes out while the driver is still there.
Notification recorded. Time, channel, who was told. That record is what makes the charge stick when it is questioned.
Accessorials attached to the load, not to the invoice. Detention, layover, lumper, extra stop, driver assist, TONU — each recorded when it happens, each carrying its evidence.
The evidence is what wins the dispute
Customers push back on detention almost reflexively. The difference between a charge that holds and one that gets written off is entirely documentation:
- Geofence timestamps for arrival and departure
- The notification, with its time
- A photo of the gate log or signed BOL with times
- The rate agreement clause it is billed under
A carrier that produces that package gets paid. A carrier that says "he was there about five hours I think" does not, and after two of those the customer learns that detention claims from you can be safely ignored.
Bill it consistently or not at all
The worst position is billing detention sporadically — sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on who was on the desk.
That trains customers that your charges are negotiable and it makes every one of them a conversation. It also means the customers who push back hardest get the best treatment, which is precisely backwards.
Decide the policy, write it down, apply it, and let the exceptions be commercial decisions made deliberately by somebody with the authority to make them.
What to measure
- Detention hours recorded versus billed versus collected. Three different numbers, and the gaps between them are your two separate problems.
- Detention by customer and by facility. Some shippers are structurally slow. That belongs in your rate for that lane, whether or not you ever collect a detention charge.
- Accessorial revenue as a share of linehaul. Most small carriers are well under where they should be, and do not know it.
- Dispute rate on accessorials. Falling dispute rates usually mean your documentation improved, not that customers got nicer.
The honest caveat
Some detention is not worth billing. A good customer with a rare bad day, an hour over on a lane that is otherwise excellent — writing it off is a commercial choice and often the right one.
The problem is not generosity. It is not knowing what you gave away. A carrier who deliberately writes off $4,000 a quarter to protect two key accounts is running a business. A carrier who loses $4,000 a quarter because nothing recorded the arrival time is losing money it never knew it had.
We build the dispatch boards, geofenced time capture and accessorial billing behind this for US carriers and freight brokerages. See how it fits together, or tell us what your loads look like.