When the hours of service rules became effective about a dozen years ago, it became very important for carriers to monitor and even charge for delays for loading and unloading. Most carriers just want their equipment moving and would rather not charge for detention. When the driver’s allocation of driving hours became more rigid, wasting time waiting became very costly to both the company and the driver.
A driver is allocated 14 hours of on-duty time each day with a limit of 11 hours of driving time. Because the driver is limited when and how he can take breaks, the driver and the company must manage those driving hours wisely to compete in the marketplace. If a company is not proactive in managing the loading and unloading time at its customers, they will suffer loss of revenue, driver retention issues, and even longer delays without a good detention monitoring and reporting system
Loss of revenue for you and pay for your driver is very costly. As mentioned above, most carriers would rather have their drivers and their equipment moving down the road to pick up or deliver the next load. Waiting in line or at the dock to unload is not fun nor profitable for the driver or you. You have a $150,000 or more asset sitting and not earning revenue. You have another prized asset sitting in the cab of the truck not earning any money. Plus, if it exceeds three hours a day, you will reduce the available driving hours. No one is happy at that point. What is it costing you to allow your assets to sit for an hour or two, how about three or four? What is this doing to your bottom line?
Driver Retention can be impacted by excessive waiting. A driver is hired on to do what? To drive an 18-wheeler down America’s highways, not waiting in a cab of a truck twiddling his thumbs. Since most drivers earn most of their pay based on mileage, they want to drive. If that truck is sitting, they are not earning money for them and their family. What does it cost a driver to sit more than a couple of hours? For each hour sitting it cost him approximately 55 miles at his rate/mile. What if this happens on both ends of a load? And what if it happens multiple times each week. What will a lot of these drivers do at some point? Quit and go to someone else? Now you have a truck setting against the fence without a driver and the expense of recruiting a new driver. Multiple that by your fleet size. The problem is enormous!
Some of your customers will not pay detention and management sometimes needs to make difficult decisions on whether to keep doing business with that customer. That is where a good Reporting and Analysis system comes into play. Keeping the history of each incident of detention is important, even if you don’t charge your customer. Why? Keeping good records of the history for each customer allows you to show them the problems they are causing to the productivity of your fleet and drivers. This data can be used to justify a rate adjustment because of the excessive time waiting, even when they are unwilling to pay actual detention. It can help justify a rate increase, providing additional revenue for your company.
Managing driver hours of service means managing detention time effectively. Other companies are charging detention. Your customer has most likely moved that other company’s truck up in line because they charge detention. Companies have reported collecting from $100 to $200 detention per truck per month. That helps offset the cost of waiting.
Find a system that provides flexible rules for monitoring and charging detention and collecting history for analysis. Also , one that provides multiple rules for paying drivers and owner-operators.