Drivers Lose 3+ Hours of Unpaid Detention at Shippers/Receivers

Long-haul truck drivers are paid by the mile, not by the hour, so when a shipper or receiver forces them to wait beyond the standard 2-hour free window to load or unload, they earn nothing. FMCSA data shows 39% of deliveries still involve detention, with average total dwell time of 3.4 hours per stop. This is not just an inconvenience — those lost hours count against the driver's 14-hour on-duty clock under HOS rules, meaning detention directly eats into the miles they can legally drive that day, compounding the income loss. Detention pay, when it exists, ranges from $50-$90/hour, but many carriers do not pass it through to the driver, and collecting it requires meticulous documentation that drivers must manage from a truck cab. The structural root cause is a total power asymmetry: shippers and receivers face zero penalty for wasting a driver's time because the driver has no leverage — refusing to wait means losing the load, damaging their carrier relationship, and potentially being blacklisted from future freight.