How to get brokers to ACTUALLY PAY DETENTION?

Not really. The bond only covers cartage fees. It doesn't cover accessorial fees like detention, tonu, etc. Heck, it doesn't even cover all cartage fees. For example most (all?) produce is exempt, as well as a couple oth6e things.

 

@ZVar Yes you can sue for TONU, I have done it my self before. I didn't need a lawyer, I file it with my local court to sue a broker in another state and they paid the entire amount of the confirmation.
If you show up to the shipper and the load is no good, if that broker fails to pay you can sue in court with that confirmation. Get proof of your appearance at the shipper and you'll win for sure.

 

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that you could not sue yourself. I simply meant as a respond to Dune's statement that it's not worth the time and effort to do it yourself.
Yes you can do it yourself, and it tends to be easier to win in those cases. You can also hire a lawyer and roll those charges into the lawsuit, if it's not convenient for you like a different jurisdiction or something.

 

This is as old as the hills. The time to wonder about detention, is BEFORE you hook onto the load, if possible. You should know, and maybe you don't, but seasoned drivers know, anything that has a dock involved, the chance for a delay rises significantly. Flatbed, tanker, dump, usually they are waiting for you, unlike warehouses, that may literally have no place for your freight, even though dispatch told you otherwise and you risked life and limb to get there.
Dock=detention,,,it's as simple as that.

 

And did you collect the detention fee you wanted or the detention fee you agreed to when you completed the carrier packet from the broker?

 

I collected what was in the contract we both signed and agreed to. Again plus all court fees, lawyer fees, etc.

It wasn't in the trucking industry, but a contract is a contract. That's why you need a contract lawyer and a proper contract.

 

You could be in the situation I’m in.
Got rate confirmation on every load this year, they only started about the 17th of Jan but call it all year, some loads were sent as $40/ton.
They paid $39/ton, said I wrote the wrong amount on invoice, I produced rate con(I have a printer in the truck and staple a copy to each invoice) haven’t heard anything back, been not quite 2 weeks.
It’s only about 20/load on 4 loads, but I am sticking to my guns on principle that at first they said,
“Your driver must’ve read the rate wrong.”

I was the driver and produced proof.
If it wasn’t snow and ice all over, I’d be making a trip in my pickup to their office, it’s only 100 miles away.
But it’ll have to wait a few more days, until the big thaw of 2021.

 

This is how it works. Brokers send you a contract and usually with smaller guys you can change some things in there and with bigger ones you can not. They simply will not agree to changes and will not give you any loads.
Guess who has the most freight and pays the most? Big guys. So you can just get your fancy contract written by a lawyer and put it in a picture frame in your sleeper, because nobody gonna sign it.

I was screwed on detention quite a few times by XPO brokers, they simply said customer did not approve the detention. Get in fight and sue them for $100? Hell no. I get great rates from them all the time and it would be stupid to blacklist the whole company based on some bad apples. I simply stop working with bad agents and shippers/receivers.
I will try to get my money calling them or emailing, but I won't be wasting my time going to a small claims court or hiring a lawyer.

@ZVar, you post a lot of good advises, but you are like an unmarried person giving advises to a married one. Or a person without kids giving advises to a parent. Things sound good and proper theoretically, but in real life it just does not work as you think it would.

 

You pick your fights carefully, you work with people or brokers who you can work with and those who don’t do a good job for you, you ignore them.

 

Oh, I'm not saying it's easy to do. or even doable for that matter. All I'm doing is answering the op's question. The only way to insure detention pay is to make it part of the contract. No more, no less.

If it's impossible to make it part of the contract then it's impossible to make sure they pay.
Unless someone can actually provide another way to make them pay for accessory pay.......