‘Detention time’ leads truckers to drive faster, report shows

Washington — Truck drivers who spend time waiting for cargo to be loaded or unloaded at customer facilities – known as “detention time” – are more likely to travel at higher speeds than drivers who aren’t detained.

That’s according to a recent study from the American Transportation Research Institute, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations, which represents employers.

Researchers analyzed GPS data for large trucks at various customer facilities. Findings show that drivers who were detained drove 14.6% faster on average than those who didn’t encounter detention time. Additionally, drivers drove faster when heading to facilities where they were detained, “indicating that truck drivers know which firms and facilities will likely detain them,” an ATRI press release states.

Driver-reported data shows that truckers were detained on 39.3% of all stops in 2023, with frequency higher for those transporting refrigerated trailers (56.2%).

Drivers were detained between 117 and 209 hours each year, depending on their sector. For-hire truckers experienced more than 135 million lost hours in 2023.

“Detention is so common that many industry professionals have accepted it as inevitable without realizing the true extent of its costs,” Chad England, CEO of trucking company C.R. England, said in the release. “ATRI’s report puts real-world numbers to the true impact that truck driver detention has on trucking and the broader economy.”

Driver detention/delay ranked ninth in the 2023 edition of ATRI’s annual survey on the most critical issues facing the trucking industry.