Detention
What is detention in trucking?
Detention is the charge for keeping a carrier's equipment (a truck at your dock, a trailer on your lot) beyond the free time the rate or contract allows. It exists because a driver waiting at your facility is a driver who cannot be loaded somewhere else: the charge pays for committed hours that produced no miles.
Detention, demurrage, per diem
- Detention: a truck and driver held at a shipper or receiver beyond the free time, clock from arrival or appointment time, as the contract names.
- Demurrage: a container left inside the port or terminal beyond its free days, clock from when the container is available for pickup.
- Per diem: a container, and sometimes its chassis, kept outside the terminal beyond its free days, clock from gate-out. Ocean carriers often invoice this as detention, so check which clock a bill means.
What starts and stops the clock
The contract says: arrival or gate-in starts it, ready-to-roll or gate-out stops it, and a free window (commonly two hours) sits in between. Everything a detention claim needs is a timestamp: who was there, when, and when the equipment was free again. Sites that record gate events where they happen bill detention from data; sites that reconstruct it from driver messages bill it from argument.