How much is detention worth to a brokerage?

For a brokerage moving a few hundred loads a month, unbilled and unrecovered detention commonly runs into the tens of thousands of dollars a year. It is the single largest accessorial leak in most small brokerages, and the cause is almost always documentation, not disagreement about whether the truck waited.

Can detention be claimed if the driver was late?

Almost never. Most shipper contracts condition detention on the truck arriving within its appointment window. A late truck that then waits four hours is out of luck, which is one more reason the ETA against the window matters before the truck arrives.

Does the driver have to notify someone?

Most contracts require the carrier or broker to notify the shipper before or when free time expires, so the shipper can act. A dispatcher who learns about the wait from the invoice a week later has usually lost the claim. Tracking that flags a truck sitting at a dock past free time is the practical way to meet the requirement.

Guides · Claims and accessorials

Detention claims that get paid: the packet, the timing, the arithmetic

Updated September 11, 2026 · 3 min read

In short

A detention claim gets paid when it is documented and fast: the rate confirmation showing the appointment and the detention terms, the BOL or POD with the facility's in and out times, tracking data that agrees with them, a one-line calculation (hours on site minus free time, times the rate), and a notice to the shipper while the truck was still waiting. Most detention goes unbilled not because it did not happen but because one of those pieces was missing when the claim was due.

Every dispatcher knows detention is owed more often than it is paid. The gap is not a negotiation problem. It is a documentation problem with a deadline attached.

Why claims fail

Four ways, in order of frequency:

No times. The driver left without getting the BOL stamped in and out, and nobody wrote the times down anywhere else.
Too late. The carrier put detention on its invoice ten days after delivery; the shipper’s contract gives the broker five days to submit accessorials.
No notice. The shipper’s contract required a call when free time expired. Nobody called.
The truck was late. It arrived after the appointment window, waited, and is owed nothing.

Notice that none of these is “the shipper disputed that the truck waited.” Shippers mostly pay documented, timely, in-contract detention. They decline the rest, and they are entitled to.

The packet

A detention claim a shipper’s AP department will pay is four things stapled together:

The rate confirmation or the shipper contract, showing the appointment window and the detention terms (free time, hourly rate).
The times. The BOL or POD stamped or written by the facility with arrival and departure, or a receiving log. When the paper is missing, tracking data that shows the truck stationary at the facility’s location between two times, or the driver’s ELD log, is the fallback and is increasingly accepted.
Proof of on-time arrival. The same times, compared with the appointment.
The arithmetic. One line.

The arithmetic

Time out minus time in equals time on site. Subtract free time (two hours is standard; some contracts give one, some three). Bill the remainder at the contract rate, in the increments the contract says (15 or 30 minutes, sometimes rounded to the hour).

Arrived 10:00 for a 10:00 appointment, departed 14:30: 4.5 hours on site, minus 2 free, 2.5 billable hours at $75 is $187.50. Arrived 10:00 for an 08:00 appointment, same wait: no claim.

Layover applies when the wait crosses a day, or when the contract converts detention to a day rate after a set number of hours; check which one applies, because the layover rate is usually the better claim by then.

The timing on both sides

The carrier’s side: the driver has to capture the times at the dock, and the carrier has to bill the detention on its invoice or notify the broker the same day. The broker’s side: notify the shipper while the truck is waiting, submit the accessorial within the shipper’s window, and pay the carrier once it is supported. A brokerage that pays carriers’ documented detention promptly and recovers it from shippers reliably gets better trucks; one that argues about it gets a reputation on the load boards.

Producing it the same day

The packet’s ingredients exist on the day of the wait: the rate confirmation is in the TMS, the times are on the driver’s phone, and the tracking record is in whatever tracks the truck. The work is assembling them into one PDF with the calculation on top, and doing it before the shipper’s deadline. That is a small, repetitive, well-defined job, which is to say the kind that should not be done by a person who has thirty loads to watch. LogiPilot builds detention and accessorial packet automation for brokerages as a fixed-scope project: the email or the tracking alert comes in, the packet comes out for review, and the claim goes to the shipper the same afternoon.

Preventing it

The best detention claim is the one that never had to be made. A truck whose ETA shows it arriving late for a 10:00 appointment is a truck whose appointment should be moved at 6:00 a.m., and a truck sitting at a dock past free time is a truck whose dispatcher should be told at that moment, not when the invoice arrives. Both are tracking problems: knowing where the truck is, compared with the window, early enough to act.

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