Owner-Operator Guide

How Detention Pay Works — And How To Build a Record While the Clock Runs

Detention is the money for time you spend sitting at a shipper or receiver after your free time runs out. Free time is usually two hours from your appointment or your check-in, and after that, detention is normally billed by the hour, often with a cap. But here's the part that decides everything: whether you actually get paid for that time is set by your rate confirmation, your carrier's policy, and the broker agreement on that load — not by a law, and not by anything you'll read on the internet. What you can control at the dock is the record. That's what this guide is about.

Say this part out loud first

I've been driving Class A since 1999. I ran OTR on brokered freight before I moved to local work, and I lost more hours at docks than I can count. So let me be straight about what an article can and can't do for you.

Nothing here decides whether you're owed detention. Not this page, not any app, not me. That's decided by the contract you signed, the policy your carrier runs, and the terms on that specific rate con. Two drivers can sit at the same door for the same four hours and have completely different answers, because they're working under different paper.

What documentation does is different and smaller and, honestly, more useful. It makes sure the facts are written down, in order, with times attached — so that three weeks later, when somebody's looking at a settlement and asking what happened on that load, nobody has to take your word for it.

What detention actually is

Detention is an accessorial — an extra line item on top of the linehaul rate. It exists because your truck sitting at a dock isn't free. You've got a clock burning, a payment due, and a load you can't get to. Detention is the mechanism the industry uses to put a price on that time.

The typical structure looks like this: you get a chunk of free time for loading or unloading. Past that, the clock is billable, usually per hour or in fractions of an hour, frequently with a daily cap and sometimes with a rounding rule. Some brokers require you to notify them before free time expires or the detention isn't payable at all. I've seen that notification requirement sitting in the terms on rate cons, and it's easy to miss unless you go looking for it. Whether missing it matters is in the terms on the load in front of you.

Layover is a different animal — stuck overnight or for a full day, not a few hours — and it has its own terms. Same rule applies: the paper decides.

Free time, and when the clock starts

"Two hours" gets repeated so often that people treat it like a rule. It isn't. It's a common default. I've seen one hour, I've seen three, and I've seen loads where free time started at the appointment time even though the facility didn't check anybody in for forty minutes.

That last part is where a lot of hours quietly disappear. There are usually two times in play:

• • Your appointment time — what the load says.
• • Your check-in time — when they actually processed you.

And there's a third one nobody writes down: your arrival time, the minute your tires hit their property. If you got there at 07:40 for an 08:00, sat in a gate line until 08:25, and got checked in at 08:40, you now have three different times that could each anchor a clock — and you'll only be able to prove the ones you recorded.

So write down all three. It costs you nothing. Which one counts is between your rate con and your carrier.

"We'll call you" is where the money goes

Here's how it usually plays out. You check in. They tell you to park and they'll call you. So you park. You get in the bunk, you eat something, you scroll your phone. Two hours go by. Three. Eventually somebody waves you into a door, you get worked, and you leave.

Nothing about that day was written down. Maybe you called dispatch around hour three and told somebody you were still sitting. That call left no record. The receiver's paperwork has one time on it. Your BOL might have an out time, might not.

Three weeks later the settlement lands with no detention line on it. Somebody looks at their file and there's nothing in there showing a long wait. Now you're reconstructing a Tuesday from memory against a system that has records. It's not that anybody's necessarily cheating you — it's that the wait was never documented, so as far as the paperwork is concerned, it didn't happen.

The gap isn't between how long you sat and how long they say you sat. It's between how long you sat and how long can be shown. Everything below is about closing that gap while you're still sitting there, when it's easy.

What a broker or carrier usually asks for

This varies, and you should ask yours directly before you need it. But the requests tend to cluster around the same handful of items:

• • In and out times on the BOL, ideally written or initialed by the facility.
• • A gate ticket or check-in receipt if the facility issues one.
• • Timestamped messages to dispatch or the broker while you were on site.
• • Notification before free time expired, where the terms require it.
• • ELD or GPS records, which some brokers will accept and some won't.
• • A claim submitted within a deadline — often short, and often measured from delivery.

Notice how many of those you can only produce if you did something at the dock. That's the whole point. The deadline one bites people especially hard: by the time the settlement shows up and you notice the missing line, the window to submit may already be closing. Worth knowing what yours is.

The six things to write down while the clock runs

This is the useful part. Six items, in order, from the time you roll in to the time you roll out. Send them as texts or emails so each one carries its own timestamp on both ends.

Three habits that make it stick

1. Facts only, every time. Load number, times, what you're waiting on. No opinions about the receiver. Frustration gets skimmed past; timestamps get read.
2. Write it while you're sitting, not after. A message sent at 10:15 from the lot means something. The same message typed at your kitchen table on Saturday means a lot less.
3. Text or email instead of calling. Calls leave nothing behind. If you do call, follow it with a two-line message repeating the times, so the conversation exists in writing.

Do it on the fast turns too. The load where you're in and out in forty minutes costs you one message and builds the habit for the day you sit for six hours.

Then the record has to meet the settlement

Here's where a lot of good documentation stops short. You logged everything at the dock, you sent the times, dispatch acknowledged them — and then two or three weeks later a settlement lands with thirty lines on it and it goes straight into a folder. The record you built never gets compared to the money that came in.

That comparison is bookkeeping. It's the same work as tracking your fuel, your maintenance, and your cost per mile, and it's the part of this business that gets pushed to Sunday night and then to never. Accessorials like detention make it harder, because they don't always land on the same settlement as the load they belong to — sometimes they come a cycle later, sometimes under a different description.

HaulProof was built for that. It keeps the books for owner-operators, leased-on drivers, and box-truck operators — settlements read line by line, receipts from a photo, IFTA, and a P&L your accountant can work from. The settlement audit is the piece I wanted most: your settlements broken out line by line so accessorials can be lined up against the loads you actually ran, instead of taken on faith.

The whole thing in one line

Arrival, check-in, heads-up, hourly, release, confirmation. Six facts, written down while you're sitting, sent where they get a timestamp. You're not making a claim at the dock and you're not arguing with anybody. You're making a record. What that record ends up being worth is between you, your contract, and your carrier — but the record itself is the one part of this that's entirely in your hands.

Common questions

This guide is general education for owner-operators, leased-on drivers, and box-truck operators — not legal, tax, or financial advice. Documenting your times helps you record and calculate what happened; it does not decide whether you are owed detention, layover, or any other payment. Your contract, your carrier's policy, and your broker agreement decide that, and tax treatment is governed by the IRS. When it matters, read your rate confirmation and talk to your carrier or your own advisor. Built by a driver, for drivers.