Truck Detention Statistics 2026

Detention is not a marginal line item. ATRI's September 2024 report — the most comprehensive analysis to date, drawing on surveys of 587 truck drivers and 245 motor carriers — puts the total 2023 cost at $15.1 billion for U.S. for-hire trucking alone: $11.5 billion in lost driver productivity and $3.6 billion in direct out-of-pocket expenses.

That $15.1 billion does not include the downstream costs borne by shippers and receivers: missed delivery windows, secondary freight congestion, and the customer service exposure that comes when shipments run late because a truck sat at a dock for four hours.

At the facility level, the cost of a single unscheduled truck — counting detention charges, idle labor at the dock, and downstream delay — runs between $200 and $800. When 39.3% of all stops generate some detention, the math compounds quickly across a week of freight.

Detention happens at nearly four in ten truckload stops, per ATRI's 2024 data. That figure — 39.3% of stops in 2023 — is based on self-reported data from drivers and carriers, making it a real-world measurement of actual facility performance, not a theoretical rate.

The rate is not evenly distributed. Spot-market fleets see detention at 42.5% of stops, suggesting that facilities with less established carrier relationships generate more unplanned waiting. The refrigerated segment is the hardest hit: 56.2% of reefer stops involve detention, driven by the operational complexity of temperature-controlled receiving and the tighter appointment windows those facilities tend to require.

DAT's carrier survey paints a consistent picture from the driver's seat: 63% of drivers say they're detained for more than three hours per stop. More than half report three-to-four-hour waits as typical. Nine percent say five or more hours is normal at the facilities they serve.

Across a full year, ATRI calculates that drivers lose between 117 and 209 hours to detention — depending on segment. For a driver running 50 weeks a year, that's 2.3 to 4.2 hours per week spent waiting at someone else's dock. Those are hours that do not generate miles, and under per-mile compensation structures, do not generate pay.

Women truck drivers experience detention at 49.1% of stops — a rate that is meaningfully higher than the 39.3% industry average. ATRI's report does not establish a cause, but the gap is consistent across years of data and points to a disparity in facility experience worth examining.

Beyond earnings, the DOT's Office of Inspector General found in a 2018 report that commercial driver detention increases crash risk — both in the hours following a lengthy detention event (fatigue from waiting eroding driving performance) and in the hours before one, as drivers push to reach a facility on time to preserve their remaining hours-of-service window. The safety dimension of detention is distinct from the economic one, and reinforces why reducing dwell time is not just a cost optimization.

Cargo theft and detention are related problems. A truck sitting unscheduled at a dock — or parked at a nearby truck stop because a facility has no open appointment — is a truck at elevated theft risk. The connection is not incidental: opportunistic theft frequently targets predictable patterns of delay.

Overhaul's 2024 Annual Cargo Theft Report recorded 2,217 cargo thefts in the United States — an increase of 49% from 2023, when the daily average was 4.06 incidents. In 2024 the daily average reached 6.07. That trajectory makes cargo security an active concern for any operation that allows dwell time to accumulate at or near the facility.

The same dock scheduling infrastructure that reduces detention — structured appointment windows, self-serve carrier booking, and real-time check-in — also reduces dwell time and therefore theft exposure. Driver-ID verification at the gate adds a direct fraud prevention layer on top.