Detention and dwell cost calculator
What waiting at docks costs per month, and how much detention billing would recover.
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Comes with the operations analyst plan: every tool for the role, from $10.20 a month at the launch price.
- Your own numbers, worked out as often as you like
- The full claim you can print or save to My work
- 3 cited sources, linked, with the checks to make
- Every other tool for the same role, in the same plan
- A plain-words read of your result (a fuller AI read with the Bifrost AI add-on)
Included in these role plans
Example result · fictional numbers
What you get: claim
Worked out by this tool from its default inputs. Its role plan lets you run your own numbers, print the sheet and save it.
$412.50 to bill this week for 5 h 30 min past free time
- Hours beyond free time
- 540 h per month
- Cost of the wait
- $51,300 per month
- Billable at contract rate
- $40,500
- Recovered today
- $14,175 (35% billed)
- Left on the table
- $26,325 per month
Detention log
- 1. Acme DC, Joliet IL
- in 06:00, out 10:45: 4 h 45 min on site, 2 h 45 min billable, $206.25
- 2. River Foods, Peoria IL
- in 13:10, out 15:00: 1 h 50 min on site, 0 h 00 min billable, $0.00
- 3. Northside Cold Storage, Gary IN
- in 07:30, out 12:15: 4 h 45 min on site, 2 h 45 min billable, $206.25
- Week total
- 3 stops, 2 past free time, $412.50
Also on the sheet
- Detention claim · 8 lines, starting with “Bill to”
- Monthly recovery · 7 lines, starting with “Hours beyond free time”
The plain-words read of this example
This week's 3 stops held the truck 11 h 20 min on site; 2 went past the 2.00-hour free time, for $412.50 at $75.00 an hour. Across the month, waiting past free time costs about $51,300, and $26,325 of billable detention is going unbilled. Send the claim with signed in and out times and ELD or GPS records attached, and agree the clock with the payer before you leave the dock. Long waits also use up the driver's on-duty hours, and the DOT Inspector General linked longer dwell to higher crash rates.
3 cited sources
- Estimates Show Commercial Driver Detention Increases Crash Risks and Costs (report ST2018019) (US DOT Office of Inspector General, January 2018)
- New research documents substantial financial and safety impacts from truck driver detention (American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), September 2024)
- 49 CFR 395.2, definition of on-duty time (eCFR (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations))
Plus 5 step-by-step checks, a print layout and a link that reopens it with your numbers.