How Driver Detention Hurts the Trucker
Posted on Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 12:40 PM
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Driver detention is a major concern for the trucking industry. As drivers sometimes wait...and wait...and wait to have a shipment unloaded, efficiency drops significantly. This sitting around wastes their available service hours and decreases payouts.
When drivers are sitting at a dock waiting for their haul to be unloaded, they are watching their available service hours tick away. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has proposed stricter guidelines on hours of service. Due to this, truckers cannot afford to waste time waiting for shipments to be unloaded. In an attempt to counter this, carriers have started charging customers for loads that take too long to get off the truck. These fees were created in hopes to expedite the process and get drivers on their way. However, most customers cannot afford to dedicate that much manpower to unloading a truck so they pay the fee if they spend more than the allotted time. Bad part about this is truckers still do not get their cut for the wasted hours.
There are several contributing factors to driver detention: the economy, the stricter hours of service rules, and the inefficiency of docks. With fewer workers there is a higher chance a driver will occur detention while unloading. If we examine this from the employer’s point of view we see clearly how they weigh their options. They either keep a dock worker, unload on time, or they let one go and risk paying the driver detention charge. The charge will undoubtedly cost them less that it would cost them to pay the employee that would have unloaded the shipment quicker. It’s easy to simplistically see how an employer makes this decision.
The last major effect is inefficiency at docks. This may seem the same as having a lack of manpower; however there is a difference. More inefficiency is caused by the way the dock is run and not just who it is run (or not run) by. Docks are generally poorly managed even if fully staffed. A way to improve on this is to give carriers a window of time in which to make it to the dock to be unloaded. This will make it much more organized for customers to unload and it will decrease the loss in productivity caused by driver detention.
With the new CSA 2010 regulations, the FMCSA is really cracking down on hours of service because of all the fatigue-related accidents that have been occurring with truckers over the years. The side effect of this is that truckers are rushed to deliver shipments and have less time to wait for their trailer to be unloaded.