How does detention time affect your day-to-day?

The American Transportation Research Institute wants to know.

It’s asking motor carriers and owner-operators to complete a survey on the ATRI website about the consequences of driver detention in the trucking industry.

“Driver detention is everyone’s problem, and it isn’t going away,” Stephen A. Truono, NFI Industries executive vice president and chief risk officer, said in an ATRI news release. “While carriers have made efforts to address it in recent years, ATRI’s comprehensive detention research will shed light on the impact and scale of driver detention on both truck and supply chains in general.”

The survey will allow drivers to share detailed experiences with detention time and how it relates to their operations.

ATRI said the study will aim to provide “new research to document the widespread negative consequences of driver detention for carriers, truck drivers, shippers and the economy as a whole.”

The institute will release separate detention time surveys for company drivers and shippers/receivers later this year.

Participants will receive an advanced copy of the full report, ATRI said.

Previous studies

Last December, the OOIDA Foundation sent a study to its members to provide government agencies with a better understanding of detention time’s impacts on the trucking industry.

The Foundation said unpaid detention time not only is a financial burden but also has a negative impact on safety. The survey results will allow the Foundation to present solutions for fixing that problem.

A previous Foundation survey revealed that drivers lose upwards of $1,500 each week in uncompensated detention time.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is also in the midst of a study that includes a look at the prevalence of detention time.

FMCSA spoke about the study at the 2023 Mid-America Trucking Show and plans to release the findings in 2025.

As part of the study, FMCSA will collect data to determine the frequency and severity of detention time, assess existing intelligent transportation systems technology solutions to measure detention time and write a final report answering research questions and offering strategies to reduce detention time.

“It is our hope that conducting these studies and publishing the reports will raise visibility to what I call micromarket failures, which have existed for a while,” Tom Keane, FMCSA’s associate administrator, said last March at MATS.

Go to FightingForTruckers.com for more information about detention time and other legislation affecting truckers. LL

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