Calculating the true cost of detention to your fleet

Detention is not just a per-load inconvenience — it is a fleet-wide financial drain that compounds across every truck, every driver, and every quarter. ATRI's 2024 study puts the per-driver annual cost at $11,000 to $19,000. For a 200-truck fleet, that is $2.2 million to $3.8 million per year in direct and indirect costs. Here is how to calculate your fleet's actual exposure and build the business case for recovery.

Last updated: April 2026 · Bastion Recovery Research Team

Direct costs of detention

These are the costs you can trace directly to hours spent waiting at facilities:

• Driver pay during wait time — hourly or per-diem cost multiplied by total detention hours. Whether you pay detention time to drivers or not, the cost exists: either as direct wages or as turnover when drivers leave over unpaid wait time.
• Fuel for idling or running reefer units — a truck idling at a dock burns 0.8 to 1.5 gallons per hour. Reefer units burn more. Across a fleet, this adds up to thousands of gallons per month.
• Missed loads — every hour sitting at a facility is a load your truck could have hauled. This is the single largest direct cost and the hardest to see on a P&L because it shows up as revenue you never earned.
• Scale of the problem — ATRI's September 2024 study found 135 million hours lost industry-wide in 2023, translating to approximately 7,000 miles lost per driver annually. Those are miles that generated zero revenue.

Indirect costs most fleets miss

Direct costs are straightforward to calculate. The indirect costs are where detention does its real damage — and most fleets never quantify them:

• Driver turnover — ATRI's 2024 study found 57% of drivers were late or cancelled subsequent pickups due to detention at a previous facility. Detention is consistently ranked as a top driver satisfaction issue. Replacing a single driver costs $8,000 to $12,000 in recruiting, training, and lost productivity.
• Hours of Service impact — detention time is classified as on-duty not-driving under 49 CFR Part 395. It eats into the 14-hour driving window without generating revenue. ATRI found 52% of drivers exhausted their available HOS time while waiting at facilities — meaning they hit their clock limit before finishing their planned route.
• Capacity loss — a truck sitting at a dock is not generating revenue. For a fleet of 200 trucks averaging 8 hours of detention per month per truck, that is 1,600 hours of capacity sitting idle — the equivalent of a full truck running for an entire month.
• Safety risk — the DOT Office of Inspector General found that detained trucks drive 15% faster than non-detained trucks afterward (DOT OIG Report ST2018019, January 2018). A 15-minute increase in average dwell time raises the expected crash rate by 6.2%. This is a liability exposure most fleets do not track.
• Shipper relationship data — tracking which facilities cause the most detention gives you negotiating leverage on rates and scheduling. Without this data, you are absorbing costs you could be passing back to the source.

How to calculate your fleet's annual detention cost

You do not need a complex model. Start with five numbers from your ELD and TMS data:

1. Count total detention hours per month — pull this from ELD data. Any time at a facility beyond the free time window (typically 2 hours) counts.
2. Multiply by your average driver cost per hour — include wages, benefits, and per-mile overhead allocated to time. For most fleets this is $30 to $45 per hour fully loaded.
3. Add fuel cost for idle time — at 1 gallon per hour and current diesel prices, this is roughly $3.50 to $4.50 per detention hour.
4. Estimate missed load revenue — take your average revenue per truck per hour and multiply by detention hours. This is the opportunity cost of the truck sitting instead of hauling.
5. Total = direct costs per month x 12 — this gives your annual direct detention cost. The real number is higher once you factor in turnover, safety incidents, and HOS disruptions.

Example: 200 trucks averaging 8 detention hours per month per truck = 1,600 total detention hours per month. At $35/hour driver cost + $15/hour opportunity cost = $80,000 per month = $960,000 per year in direct costs alone. Add indirect costs (turnover, safety, HOS disruptions) and the real number is significantly higher.

Annual detention loss by fleet size

Based on ATRI's 2024 per-driver cost range of $11,000 to $19,000 annually:

Making the business case for detention recovery

The numbers above are large enough that detention should be a line item on your operating budget — not a line in a driver complaint log. Here is how to frame it for leadership:

• Present detention loss as a real financial line item — use the formula above with your actual ELD data. An abstract industry statistic is easy to ignore. Your fleet's specific number is not.
• Compare cost of recovery vs. cost of doing nothing — a commission-only recovery service like Bastion costs $0 unless money actually comes back. There is no downside risk to try.
• Frame it as recoverable revenue — detention loss is not a sunk cost. A significant portion of it is contractually owed and collectible. Even recovering 30% to 50% of the total changes your P&L meaningfully.
• Quantify the comparison — for a 200-truck fleet losing $2.2M to $3.8M annually, recovering even 30% means $660,000 to $1.14M back on the books. That is the equivalent of adding 10 to 15 trucks to your fleet in terms of revenue impact.

What top carriers charge for detention

Detention rate policies vary by freight type, but most carriers in the 50-500 truck range charge within these bands:

The industry average detention rate is approximately $63 per hour (ATRI 2024). The problem: the average trucking operating cost is approximately $66.65 per hour. Detention fees only rose 3% over the 2018-2023 period while operating costs climbed steadily. Carriers are losing money on every detained hour even when they successfully collect the fee.

Negotiating detention terms across your fleet

Recovery is one half of the equation. The other half is preventing losses at the contract level:

• Build minimum detention terms into your rate confirmation template — free time, hourly rate, and documentation requirements should be standard on every load, not negotiated ad hoc.
• Use facility dwell time data to justify rates on bad lanes — if a specific shipper or receiver consistently detains your trucks for 4+ hours, your rate on that lane should reflect it. Data makes this conversation factual, not adversarial.
• Track which brokers pay detention vs. which deny — over time, route freight away from brokers who systematically refuse detention claims. Your TMS data tells you exactly who these are.
• Build a buffer into linehaul rates for chronically delayed lanes — if a lane has a 90% chance of 3+ hours detention, price accordingly. Do not subsidize a shipper's inefficient dock operations with your margin.

For more on the federal regulatory landscape around detention, see our FMCSA detention time rules guide. For a step-by-step recovery process, see recovering detention pay at scale.