The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration wants to know how big a problem detention time is for truckers. But first they want to know how they should go about figuring that out.
Way back in 2011, the Government Accountability Office told the FMCSA to study if long detention times might be impacting driver fatigue and HOS violations. The FMCSA then spent years announcing, planning, and then conducting a study into driver detention times. Once they completed it however, they discovered that there was “a critical data gap in our understanding of the detention issue.”
While the FMCSA now knew how long it took to load and unload every truck at 29 medium and large carriers and 2 small carriers during 7 months of 2013, they had no idea how long it should have taken to load and unload all of those trucks.
Now the FMCSA is asking for public input on how they should go about studying this properly. According to the request for public comment, “FMCSA is interested in data sources, methodologies, and potential technologies that could provide insight into loading and unloading delays experienced by CMV drivers.”
“Specifically, FMCSA requests information that addresses the following questions:
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Are data currently available that can accurately record loading, unloading, and delay times?
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Is there technology available that could record and delineate prompt loading and unloading times versus the extended delays sometimes experienced by drivers?
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How can delay times be captured and recorded in a systematic, comparable manner?
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Could systematic collection and publication of loading, unloading, and delay times be useful in driver or carrier business decisions and help to reduce loading, unloading, and delay times?
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What should FMCSA use as an estimate of reasonable loading/unloading time? Please provide a basis for your response.
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How do contract arrangements between carriers and shippers address acceptable wait times? Do these arrangements include penalties for delays attributable to a carrier or shipper?
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What actions by FMCSA, within its current statutory authority, would help to reduce loading, unloading, and delay times?”
You can submit a comment into the public register by clicking here.
The eld should answer those questions. Use any and all time noted on the eld when the driver inputs (arrive shipper\ cosignee)
Also I would stress to use the off duty time immediately after the arrive shipper/cosignee time also. I as a drive know my 70 hour clock is vitally important and I want to conserve it. So I will be a reasonable time to load/unload 20-30 minutes then go off duty for 2,3,4…hours until it is loaded or unloaded. This total time is more accurate. And look the driver is again giving the truthful right data.
Placing yourself “off-duty” while at a shipper/ consignee is a DOT violation. You should be recording that time as “sleeper”
Off duty/ sleeper doesn’t matter. There both the same.
NO, you are wrong. Off duty and Sleeper are two different loggings.
What I don’t understand is that if I have a business and send someone to home Depot, Staples, or the auto parts store to pick up an order and they are waiting 3-4 hours to be loaded, I have to pay them 3-4 hours pay. Why is it that a TRUCK DRIVER goes to a location to be loaded and waits 3-4 hours he doesn’t get paid ? Where is the labor board in all this ? All BOL’s are generated by computer so that company knows when the driver is coming to pick up a load, or coming to drop a load. You get to the company and they never seem to know what is going on.
If you are off duty, it has to be recorded as off duty. i.e. you have left your equipment at the shipper and you are touristing the neighborhood
I’ve used off duty for 40 years, nobody ever questioned it
All these problems that occur in the Trucking Industry can’t be fixed by using ELD’S or Paper Logs.
Problems occur because the Transportation of goods is one world, you get paid to deliver. When you arrive at your destination and check in, people in shipping and receiving could care less when you get unloaded or loaded because they get paid by the hour not by the load on the truck or loading it.
If you want to fix this problem, then you have to regulate both sides of the industry. Try putting ELD’S on the person responsible for loading and unloading these trucks, maybe you will find the answers your looking for.
Great answer Rudy!
If it takes more than 2 hours to load or unload, the driver should be paid, the minimum amount should be 15.00 per hour, and this crap about giving them up to 4 hours to load or unload is plain bull shit!!!! I use to unload a trailer in 45 minutes and that’s with empty milk creates on skids!!!!!
And that $15 an hour should be to the driver not to the truck.
Leave it to the government…..
Shippers and consignee you arrive at your schedule time and they inform you load won’t be ready for hours and your company won’t redispatch and you sit burning up your clock. Same at consignee they take hours to unload a loaded trailer on pallets? You ask why and you get the same old BS answer that’s the way it is. There you go again burning your clock and not getting paid cause that’s the way it is ! I believe the driver should be paid soon as he arrives at shipper or consignee and the cost be put on the shipper or consignee. But that won’t happen because companies kiss there ass to keep the business but if it was signed into a law for all truck business maybe things would change.
Until there is a federal law with teeth this is all pipe dreams. Broker /shipper/ receiver is not willingly going to pay detention as that effects profits. Some places do but majority don’t. It’s called warehousing and has gone on for years.
J.B. Hunt uses an app to record in/out times. Also this shows how little the FMCSA knows about the trucking field. Detention time affects drivers big time. Held up to unload affects my reload time. If you’re late, you may be put on the WORK IN LOAD, which can easily eat up your HOS. Detention pay after 2 hours is ridiculous. Funny how Coca Cola has posters showing employees stealing time from them. Hey Coca Cola, how about unloading the trucks in a timely manner??? I wonder if the FMCSA ever read the trucking forums? This is why I’m going part time.
We are small company. We only have two trucks. but we use a billing app that records are in and out times at the facilities. not only does this monitor the detention problem it makes it easier for payroll and accounts receivable.
Just send their people to just about any major food warehouse. Also include the extortionate lumper fees with the time card.
can’t do that .If they did then those poor lumpers would be out of a job. there were times when I was glad to pay $150. to unload and breakdown the pallets I had . I picked up loads of Heline Curtis in Chicago taking it back here and at the whse my time in was 0700 but they also had 15 other trucks scheduled for that time . Now when the lumper that worked at his job that night go out of work he became a lumper. Well ,the 12 pallets I had broke down to 150 pallets because they want one item to a pallet and sometimes it was only one carton on the pallet . The whole operation took him 6.5 hours to complete and it would have taken me 16 hours .
you know this probably ain’t a bad idea either. Most of the time you walk into a DC in a time clock’s right there. Punching it out on their time clock to prove that you were there.
Drivers conserving the clock is why we are in this situation in the first place. Shippers and receivers abuse drivers because they are allowed to at little or no cost to them. There are no acceptable circumstances that a truck takes longer than an hour to load or unload. The problem is with capacity and greed. Companies use driver time to make up for not having enough employees or docks or forklifts or ???
Sounds like everything else government does NOTHING BUT STUDIES. Eat up more tax dollars and complain usa is broke.
The eld is takeing our time away you cant stop and take a nap anymore you cant stop to eat and you barely have enough time to go to the bathroom.i have been trucking for 32 years i have watched this industry change for the worse ever thier takeing our rights away. They want the next generation to work for what we worked for the last 30 years its all greed they want it all and we do it for for basically. The old school drivers were the last of the cowboys we were the best!
They should regulate warehouses and throw fines at them. All pickups & deliveries should be by appts and have them keep track of time in & out. Turn in those recorded times to DOT or the government.
how hard would it be to put sensors on the dock to tell when the truck is actually being loaded and unloaded as opposed to sitting and waiting for somebody to do paperwork.
Anyone who doesn’t realize the impact of delays while loading and unloading doesn’t need to be involved in regulating any aspect of trucking. The answer is to change shippers and receivers by the minute. As long as the driver’s time is free, nothing will change.
TRUTH!
I work for an LTL carrier. We have a no service list for shippers or receivers that delay us more than 1 hr for a stop routinely. Once your on that list you either pay full TL rate (even for one pallet) plus hourly detention after 1 hr or we won’t accept bookings to or from you in the future.
Thats a great idea .
It’s all about the Benjamins.
I used to haul freight but now I haul MAIL and had I known 45years ago what I know now I could be retired full time instead of working part time . Right now the P.O. wants us at their facility 15 minutes to dispatch so we can The schedule says you leave at 0500 and by 0501 you’re gone . We don’t use Bill of Lading , we use trip tickets and on them it tells the time of departure and approx. arrival time and any reason for delays. If there is any mail on the dock ,oh well , the next truck will take it . I stupidly turned down a driving Job a long time ago and now I kick myself in the rear but you can’t cry over spilt milk .
There used to be a law that says if a driver travel longer then 10 hours to get to his destination he is not required to unload his truck . The Gov supports this and will even have US Marshalls at your door to make sure you do not unload,the receiver does . 25 years ago they were enforcing this law but I don’t know if they still do or not.
Charge $150/hour after the first hour. It worked for me.
If they want to see how long it takes to load a truck, go to a cold storage in Salinas. Them Mexicans can load a truck faster than an enchilada coming out your tailpipe!
Everyone here is asking for government intervention in loaders and unloaded. How about government steps back so we can do our jobs and run our company’s. Just like student aid, the government stepped in with loans backed by the government and now students combined owe over a trillion in student debt. Government ruins everything it puts is hands on, in trucking case makes it so cheap and complicated no one wants to drive.
Dentention time is a somewhat complicated issue. This difference being from the many facets of the transportation industry, reefer vans, dry vans, flatbed etc.
Now with the use of mandated e’logs I’m quite sure a lot of discrepancies in time management and recording on this issue will be documented and statistics from this will be calculated.
The issue with shippers and receivers scheduling trucks for delivery and pickup by appointment has its share of issues as well.
All it takes in a multiple delivery or pickup is one hiccup with ine appointment and it screws the rest of a drivers schedule. In addition there are receivers that schedule an appointment and you have 1 hour before and 1 hour after your appointment to check in. This then often leads to a wait time still of 2 hours or more.
I’m sure with the technology emerging wait times as well as rates will have to go up with the collrction of data from telematics systems, but that will be long after I’m outta the industry and gone!!
A woman shot a man at the ta in slidell Louisiana earlier. The man had just fired her husband from his driving job when the woman grabbed a gun and fired several shots at him and his truck,striking him in the leg.a woman and a one year old were in the truck but unharmed.
First you are only required by the dot to record (log) unloading and loading time if you are required to stand on the dock and count in going on or off your truck or you have to load or unload the load. You required to log we you get there and when you depart. If all you do is sit in you truck you can either log into the sleeper or off duty until you done.
My trucks deliver through new england area, specially 5 NYC borough’s, 200,00, after first hour delay is applicable, believe, they do unload and reload.my trailers within 1 hour. Some.still.want.to play games. i.e hunts point, and.some want to fight the fees, making treats. Thats New England. But we.do not give it in. Unfortunately some OO goes there and offer cheaper haulls, no penalty. Etc. Oh well. Let them continue truck slavery .even mega carriers are fighting over local LTL business, JBHunt, Ruan, Ryder,Pensky, schineider , among others are in and taking all.the LTL,3PL and intermodal, by offering way down prices..trucking needs regulation, less mega carriers, less brockers, and.educated shipping/receiving its no.joke fighting with megas and brockers..