Ask a carrier why detention went unpaid and you will hear that the broker refused it. Ask the broker and you will usually hear that the claim could not be substantiated. Both are describing the same event from different ends, and the second version is the one you can do something about.
Detention is the clearest example of a cost you have already paid — in hours the truck could not earn — being recovered only if you can prove it happened.
Read the terms before the wheels turn
The rate confirmation defines the claim. Three things decide whether one is even possible:
- When the clock starts — usually after a free period measured from your arrival, and sometimes from your appointment time instead, which is not the same thing if you arrive early.
- What evidence is required, and in what form. This clause is where most claims are actually lost.
- Any cap, and whether detention accrues hourly or in blocks.
What to capture at the dock
- Arrival time, recorded the moment you arrive rather than reconstructed later.
- Check-in evidence — a signed or stamped time on the paperwork wherever the facility will give one.
- A message to the broker as the free time expires, in writing, so the notification has a timestamp of its own.
- Departure time, and the delivery receipt showing both.
- Electronic logging records, which corroborate the rest and are hard to argue with.
None of this takes more than a few minutes. All of it is impossible to recreate two weeks later, which is when most carriers first think about it.
Submitting it so it can be approved
The person receiving your claim usually has to justify it to someone else. Make that easy and approval gets easier:
- Reference the load the way THEY file it, not the way you do.
- State the arithmetic plainly — arrival, free time, departure, hours claimed, rate, total.
- Attach the evidence with the claim rather than offering to send it.
- Submit it with the invoice, not weeks later; an aged claim competes with nothing and loses.
Track which customers generate detention repeatedly. A facility that reliably holds you for hours is not an unlucky stop, it is a lane priced wrong — and that is a decision about whether to keep going there, which no claim process will make for you.