Yard Dwell Time Calculator
Yard dwell time is how long a trailer stays on your property, from gate in to gate out. For trailers still in the yard, it runs from gate in until now. Paste your gate times below to get the average and median dwell of finished visits, the oldest trailers still sitting in the yard, and how many are over your limit.
| Trailer | Gate in | Gate out | Dwell | Status |
|---|
2026-09-28 07:42, 2026-09-28T07:42, 09/28/2026 07:42, 09/28/26 7:42 AM. A header row is optional. Nothing you paste leaves this page.
01How dwell is calculated
For a finished visit, dwell is gate out minus gate in. For a trailer still in the yard, it's the time from gate in until the "as of" time, which defaults to now. The calculator keeps the two groups separate. Averaging open trailers in with finished visits would hide the ones that are aging, and those are the ones you want to see.
The U.S. DOT Inspector General uses the same idea for trucks, defining dwell time as "the total time spent by a truck at a facility." The same report estimated that a 15-minute increase in average dwell time raises the expected crash rate by 6.2 percent (DOT OIG ST2018019, 2018).
02Dwell is not the same as detention
Detention is the part of a driver's wait that runs past the free time in the contract. Dwell is the whole stay of the trailer. A dropped trailer can dwell for days with no driver waiting. A live load can run into detention within an afternoon. That's why the limit above goes from 2 hours, a common free-time window for live loads, to 7 days, for dropped trailers. In an FMCSA-sponsored study, drivers were detained at about 10 percent of stops, for an average of 1.4 hours past a two-hour window (84 FR 26933, 2019). For the detention side of a single truck, use the detention and free time calculator.
03What to do with the numbers
- Work the oldest trailers first. The table is sorted by dwell, longest first. An empty that has sat for a week is a trailer the carrier wants back, and a spot you could be using.
- Watch the median, not only the average. One trailer left for a month drags the average up. The median shows a typical visit.
- Check open trailers against the yard. A trailer that shows "in yard" for 30 days may have left without a gate-out record. Walk the yard with a yard check sheet and close those rows.
- Want a one-page report? The yard detention audit turns a day of gate records into a printable summary with the share of trucks past free time.
Get the dwell clock without the spreadsheet.
With Vantage, the guard logs gate in and out on a phone, with a timestamp on every record and a photo whenever the camera is used, so dwell is measured as it happens instead of pasted in later. The Free plan is $0 for 1 user, 1 yard and 100 gate transactions a month. No card.
Start free → The calculator stays free with no signup either way.FAQ
What is yard dwell time?
Yard dwell time is how long a trailer or container stays on your property, from gate in to gate out. For a trailer that is still in the yard, it is the time from gate in until now. The U.S. DOT Inspector General defines dwell time as the total time spent by a truck at a facility.
How do you calculate average dwell time?
For each trailer that has left, subtract the gate-in time from the gate-out time, then average those durations. Report trailers still in the yard separately, by how long they have been there so far, because averaging them in with finished visits hides the ones that are aging.
What is the difference between dwell time and detention?
Dwell time is the whole stay. Detention is the part of a driver's wait that runs past the free time in the contract, often two hours. A dropped trailer can dwell for days with no driver detained, while a live load can run into detention in an afternoon.
Is my data uploaded?
No. The calculator runs in your browser. The times you paste are not sent anywhere.