Detention is one of the few costs in logistics that feels personal. Not because the rate is shocking (it usually isn’t), but because everyone can see it was avoidable. The driver’s waiting. The dock is backed up. The appointment time was wrong. Someone forgot the lumper. Finance is asking why the load is over budget again.

Detention isn’t the problem, it’s the symptom

We treat detention like a carrier issue or a warehouse issue, but it’s really a systems issue. It shows up when handoffs are sloppy and information moves slower than freight.

Here’s what’s usually broken underneath:

• Appointments are made with incomplete info. The PO changed, the pallet count changed, or the product wasn’t even staged yet. Nobody updated the dock schedule.
• The dock schedule lives in someone’s inbox, not in the operating system. When that person is out, chaos becomes policy.
• Inbound and outbound don’t share the same truth. The WMS says it’s ready, the floor says it’s not, the TMS already tendered it.
• “FCFS” is used as a coping mechanism. It sounds flexible, but it’s how we guarantee random peaks, long lines, and angry drivers.
• The rules are fuzzy. When does detention start? When does it stop? What counts as “arrived”? Yard check-in vs gate-in vs dock-in are three different timestamps, and we mix them constantly.

Why does it keep happening? Because the cost doesn’t hit the same team that caused it. Operations is trying to clear the dock. Transportation is trying to keep service. Finance is cleaning up the mess weeks later. When ownership is split, the fix never sticks.

The industry trend is less forgiveness and more billing

Our industry used to absorb inefficiency because capacity was looser and relationships were stickier. That’s changed.

• Detention and accessorial charges are now a margin strategy for a lot of carriers and drayage providers, especially when linehaul is under pressure.
• Appointment compliance is tightening at retailers and big DC networks. Miss the window and you’re not “late”, you’re rescheduled.
• Warehouses are running leaner. Labor is still expensive, turnover is still real, and many sites are operating with less buffer.

The numbers add up fast. A common structure is 2 hours free, then $75 to $125 per hour. If a site burns an extra 45 minutes per truck and sees 25 trucks a day, that’s over 18 hours of waiting created daily. Even if only a third of that converts into billable detention, you’re staring at thousands per week in avoidable cost, plus service failures that don’t show up as a clean line item.

And then there’s the quiet multiplier: every hour a truck waits is an hour it can’t be repositioned. That’s why “just pay it” often turns into “why can’t we cover this lane anymore?”

A practical path forward that doesn’t require a massive project

We don’t need a new mission statement. We need cleaner execution in five places.

Get serious about timestamps and definitions

If we can’t agree on when a truck arrived, we can’t dispute anything and we can’t improve anything.

Pick your official timestamps and document them:

• Gate-in (or geofence arrival)
• Check-in complete
• Dock-in
• Unload start
• Unload complete
• Paperwork released
• Gate-out

Then make sure they land somewhere usable, even if it’s a shared sheet at first. Most detention fights come down to missing or inconsistent time data.

Fix appointments upstream, not at the dock door

The dock schedule is the last place to solve a planning problem.

Two simple rules that change behavior:

• No appointment without confirmed pallet count and ready time.
• No tender without a confirmed appointment window.

That forces WMS, transportation, and customer service to align before the truck shows up.

Stop letting “exceptions” become the normal process

Every site has exceptions: hot loads, production delays, add-on POs, late inbound. The mistake is handling them in a free-form way.

Create an exception lane with rules:

• Who approves breaking the schedule
• How it gets communicated to the carrier (rate confirmation notes, EDI update, email template)
• What’s the fallback if the appointment can’t be met (cross-dock option, drop trailer, reschedule)

Exceptions should be fast, but they should not be improvisation.

Use carrier feedback as an early warning signal

Drivers and dispatchers know which facilities waste time. If we only hear it when the invoice shows up, we’re late.

Ask carriers for three things weekly:

• Top 5 facilities by wait time
• Lanes where they’re building in “pain pricing”
• Any site where they’re about to refuse tenders

That’s not fluffy relationship management. It’s market intelligence.

Automate the boring parts so the team can manage by exception

A lot of detention is born from manual follow-ups: “Did they check in?” “Are they on a door?” “Is the paperwork ready?” When those updates rely on phone calls and inboxes, it’s guaranteed friction.

This is where a tool can help. If you want to move faster, Debales.ai can pull together operational signals from your TMS and communications so teams can spot detention risk earlier and tighten follow-through without adding headcount.

What we can do this week (no big tech overhaul required)

If you run ops, transportation, or a 3PL desk, here are moves you can execute in days, not quarters.

1) Run a 30-day detention and accessorial audit Pull all detention, layover, redelivery, and TONU charges. Sort by facility, customer, lane, and time of day. You’ll usually find that 60 to 80 percent of the pain comes from a handful of repeat offenders.

2) Create a single-page detention playbook Define free time, required proof, who disputes, and who approves payment. Include screenshots or examples of acceptable POD notes and gate receipts. Make it easy for night shift and new hires.

3) Add two fields to every load: ready time and appointment status Not “scheduled” as a vague word. Use simple statuses like requested, confirmed, changed, missed, rescheduled. If it’s not confirmed, treat it as a risk.

4) Put a “detention risk” tag on live loads If the warehouse is running behind, if the pickup is FCFS at a known problem site, if drayage is dealing with terminal congestion, tag it early. Then you can prioritize check calls, adjust ETAs, or swap equipment before the clock runs.

5) Start disputing with evidence, not emotion When we dispute detention, we often send a sentence. That doesn’t work.

Send a packet:

• Rate confirmation detention terms
• Appointment confirmation
• Gate-in or geofence timestamp
• Dock-in or check-in record
• In and out times from the facility, if available
• Notes on delays caused by the shipper/receiver

Even if you don’t win every dispute, you’ll change behavior. People tighten up when they know you’re tracking it.

The real win isn’t saving fees, it’s protecting capacity

Detention is what happens when we run freight like it’s a series of transactions instead of a system. The fee is annoying, but the bigger loss is trust: carriers stop prioritizing us, drivers dread our facilities, and our team spends its energy reacting.

If we want fewer surprises, we don’t need perfect visibility. We need shared definitions, clean handoffs, and the discipline to treat waiting time like the operational defect it is. The clock is running whether we measure it or not.