Lately, my small co. (3 trucks) has been seeing massive dock detention times. Every time I mention detention time to a broker (we haul 99% broker freight) they say the shipper/receiver doesn't pay it. Are we just at their mercy, or is Detention Time something I can just add to the bill. I'm to the point that I will start faxing a letter with the confirmation that states 2 hours free, then $75 per hour period. Pay up!!! How do you guys handle the detention?

 

I add it to the rate sheet when I sign it. $50/after 1st hour free. When we arrive I make th ecall to say we are there. If we are still waiting 1 hour later, I make another call to say we are on the clock.

When we get loaded, I get a revised rate sheet showing detention.

 

Rank's got it right. The best course of action is to be upfront about your policy from the start. Get it into the rate confirmation and then get a revised confirmation as the load dictates. The paper trail is your friend. Many times a broker will say the customer won't pay detention, it's often true. However, your contract is with the broker so who cares whether he gets paid or not. If they won't agree to detention then you have to make the call on whether to accept the load or not. Sometimes the rate is good enough that the possibility of detention doesn't matter. In my case, if I've brought it up it's because I believe it could be an issue and if they don't agree we don't take the load.

 

In my 20 years as a shipping mgr my once a month chore was verifying detention charges.

Remember to be there by your appointment time or no detention will be paid.

JB Hunt always played a game with me. They would have 10 loads to pick up in a day and 1 would be on time. The dispatcher would start calling me saying detention starts in 1 hour, they would call back and say detention starts in 30 minutes, then 15 minutes. What they didn't know was the trailer was already loaded and I was waiting till 5 minutes to go I would have the driver sign the bills.

JB Hunt always knew their appontment time when they were on time. When the driver was late they always said they had a 12 hour pickup window. Whenever I got a Hunt driver in and he was late and said one thing out of line he waited a minimum of 4hrs.

It's all in the attitude of the company and the driver on how fast you are loaded or unloaded. I had a driver once that complained his bills weren't being printed fast enough. He had waited 15 minutes and the girl that did the bills for me called me and said she was getting harrassed by this driver. I politely asked him if he had a problem and he went off on me. I asked him to back his trailer back into the dock because we had forgot to do something. He backed it in and I had my guys unload the trailer. I called his company and told them I didn't want their a-hole of driver delivering my goods. I told the driver to leave and he took a swing at me. I picked him up by his coat about 2 feet off the ground and told him to leave. He wouldn't leave he just sat in his truck backed into the dock. I called the police to have him removed from the property.

You are at the mercy of your customer. Be polite to them and they will help you get on your way as fast as possible.

I don't know how many time I loaned my car to drivers to go into town and get something to eat while we were loading their trailer. They would come in cheerfull and ask if there was anywhere to get something to eat. Most places in this small town are not accessible by truck so I would ask if they wanted to take my car into town and get something to eat. I bet 50% of the time my car came back with a full tank.

I think I have heard every excuse there is why they needed loaded or unloaded right away. Don't play those games, the customer has already heard it a 100 times. I think I have seen and heard everything in 20 years dealing with companys and drivers. I have actually had drivers cry cause they had to wait a little bit.

BE ON TIME AND POLITE!!

 

You are so right on that one. There was a time when I was loaded AHEAD OF 2 OTHER COMPANY TRUCKS FOR THE COMPANY I WAS DRIVING FOR AT THE TIME. The key was they were giving the shipping office a very hard time I was saying yes sir here is your PU number and here is my trailer number tandems are locked at the back and which door do you want me in. The other 2 srivers were screaming at tehm also smelled like they had not taken a bath in days and were basically being AHOLES. They called and complained to the owner of the company about me getting loaded ahead of them he told them the shipper told him all about it and you 2 will be in my office when you get back to the yard. They were fired I was given a pay raise.

 

Being polite and respectful will always serve you better than being nasty and disrespectful. If there is a question about whether my truck will sit for a while, then I put the detention on the bills. I remember a company in Portage, IN that I will never haul for again. They kept me waiting for 6 hours along with several other trucks. There was no way to get out of line to leave so I had to stay. There was no reason why any of us could not get loaded. As soon as second shift came in we all got loaded fairly quickly. I was promised detention time. That was several years ago. I am still waiting. I will never haul for that shipper again. If a shipper keeps me waiting for an unreasonable time and doesn't want to pay detention then I don't do business with them.

 

Drivers always hated our BOL. You signed the glass thing like when you receive a UPS package.

Your signature was printed on the BOL when they were printed along with a automatic date and time stamp.

 

While I wrote that post yesterday, I was sitting waiting on a 10AM appointment to load. The load had to go 280 miles and deliver by 5 PM. I was finally given a door at 7:15 PM and Loaded and gone at 9:15 PM. Now the broker is pissed at me because I wasn't in El Paso by 8 AM. I was at the shipper 45 min. early. I asked the broker if he was suggesting that I operate outside the bounds of HOS. He hung up on me. Its now 11AM the next morning and I am being unloaded. He says detention is out of the question because I wasn't here at 8 AM. Yeah, he'll never see my company name on another of his confirmations. Wild West Express out of Las Cruces, NM. They run bunches of their own trucks. I guess they probably broker these ones out because they know of the detention and aren't willing to put their own trucks on the run.

 

As an after thought, I am ALWAYS professional, polite and friendly with my shippers and receivers and I DEMAND the same for my drivers. To lose a customer to a bad mood is stupid. But around hour 6 or 7 waiting to get a door, one begins to heat up a little bit.

 

6 or 7 hours.....I wonder how these shipping people keep their jobs.

I was probably in a different situation because all the loads we did were customer routed. If I was late loading someone I caught it from the trucking company, then the broker, then the customer. If it got as far as the customer I was in BIG trouble from our corporate office.