What's the #1 reason your detention claims get denied?

I guess I'm just super lucky.... Small company but I get paid for my "non-driving" time at an hourly rate plus all miles driven on the truck (on or off duty).

I often have "detention" times because loading and unloading feed at mills usually have lines of trucks waiting and commonly a mill runs out of "product" for a variety of reasons (including over-selling just like airlines to ensure product is not built up if carriers don't arrive to get assigned loads).....

It's not uncommon to have 2-4 hr wait times, and have even had multiple loads that I waited over 12 hours (moving truck forward a truck length every 3 hrs).

I let the billing people take care of getting their hourly fees for truck, fuel, driver etc... but to help them I always note my arrival and departure times on my freight bill as well as a note for the reason (ie, "line of trucks", "out of product", "mill down for repairs", "staff delay", etc. ). And if it's an "out of product" issue I take a picture of the load screen showing product volume and attach with my completed paperwork.

I don't see the actual billing so don't know how often the broker or customer or shipper pay "detention"... But I know my bosses appreciate it, and I never have to worry about getting paid for my wait times.

 

Is RO an AI?

 

Where I'm at as a company driver we're geo-fenced at all locations so the wait time is automatically accounted for and paid. Drivers don't have to do anything it pays like clockwork. The result being drivers don't even bother trying to cheat e-logs saving time here and there. Everything is on duty because it all pays. Taking a shower or eating lunch, that's on duty. Drivers don't shortcut their sleep trying to make up missed revenue from time wasted by customers. Which is how it should be everywhere in trucking. The technology is there so there's no excuses not to pay drivers for all time on duty in addition to driving. By and large industry wide nobody wants to be responsible paying for drivers' wasted time waiting around. It's a lot of extra cost that exposes just how wasteful and inefficient they are.

 

BINGO!

 

The problem with brokers and detention pay is only if you don't follow their specific policy on it. I rarely had issues getting paid detention from brokers back when I was working with them. They all have different policy and procedures there though so it's not uniform and can be a headache. And no carrier with direct customers wants brokers having their ELD data which is understandable.