The surprising reasons why truck drivers wait hours unpaid
Mike Nichols, a truck driver based in Wisconsin, is probably one of the lucky ones. Unlike many of America’s 2.2 million truck drivers, he doesn’t waste hours of his week waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
“My customers and their customers are excited to see me,” said Nichols, who mostly hauls agricultural loads rather than trailers full of, say, Amazon orders, groceries or furniture. “It’s amazing how stark the difference is between how they treat bulk carriers versus the way most treat the outbound box trailers.”
Detention time, as it’s called, is a bizarre feature of being a trucker. Few outside of trucking know about this aggravating waste of time. Per FreightWaves SONAR data, truck drivers spend an average of 119 minutes per pickup or drop-off waiting to be loaded or unloaded. Drivers are expected to wait for free during the first two hours of detention, and then receive hourly pay for any additional hour.
If that seems absurdly inefficient, it is. A 2018 study from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General found that truck drivers lose $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in earnings because of detention time. What’s more, each 15-minute increase in detention increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2%. Detention isn’t just frustrating for drivers; it’s potentially dangerous.
“This becomes a safety issue,” said Isaias Sanchez, a truck driver based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “Truckers are always in a hurry to get back on the road and that can lead to accidents.”
So, I chatted with two former executives from the food and beverage world to learn more — Rob Haddock and Ben Richey. They’re the guys who used to get calls from truck drivers asking why on earth they can’t get out of their warehouses more quickly. The reasons boil down to this:
If that seems absurdly inefficient, it is. A 2018 study from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General found that truck drivers lose $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in earnings because of detention time. What’s more, each 15-minute increase in detention increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2%. Detention isn’t just frustrating for drivers; it’s potentially dangerous.
“This becomes a safety issue,” said Isaias Sanchez, a truck driver based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “Truckers are always in a hurry to get back on the road and that can lead to accidents.”
So, I chatted with two former executives from the food and beverage world to learn more — Rob Haddock and Ben Richey. They’re the guys who used to get calls from truck drivers asking why on earth they can’t get out of their warehouses more quickly. The reasons boil down to this:
