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. And 40% of all poll respondents at the time in fact said detention had gotten worse for them (full 2023 results shown below).
Yet if the American Transportation Research Institute’s new close look at detention is correct, waits to load/unload are getting at least marginally better for the average driver out there, if not the majority of Overdrive’s largely 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. ATRI’s topline finding estimated trucking writ large lost $15 billion to detention at shippers and receivers in 2023. Yes, $15 billion with a B. Consider the American Trucking Associations’ annual revenue figure for the entire trucking industry is nearly $1 trillion ($987 billion) — that $15 billion lost to detention is worth 1.5% of the entire revenues generated by trucking companies nationwide.
[Related: More heat on detention, which cost trucking $15B in 2023]
Here’s a big thanks to continued support for Overdrive Radio from the fine folks at sponsoring company Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Treat anti-gel and Lifeline rescue treatment to get you through the coldest temps, likewise its all-weather Diesel Defender and Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, among other products.
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. Take a listen:
More on the detention subject:
**Relatively recent Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association member survey
**FMCSA plans new study/quandary for owner-ops working with brokers
[Related: Turn up the heat on detention: How truckers can calculate a fair rate to compensate for delays]