Truck detention and dwell statistics, 2026.

The numbers behind truck detention, yard dwell, and gate turnaround — sourced, cited, and free to reference. If you run a yard, a dock, or a fleet, these are the figures your operation is measured against.

Compiled from public industry research · detention and dwell figures re-checked September 2026

Detention: how often, how much

Detention is not an edge case. It shows up on roughly 2 out of every 5 stops, and the money the industry loses to it is measured in billions.

According to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI, 2024), detention appears on about 39.3% of stops, the industry lost $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity to it in 2023, and more than 135 million hours were lost in for-hire trucking (ATRI release). Detention rates themselves are set contract by contract, so check your carrier agreements for the free time and hourly rate that apply to you.

Dwell & turnaround: how long trucks sit

In an FMCSA-sponsored study of carrier data, drivers were detained at about 10% of stops, and on those stops they waited an average of 1.4 hours past a commonly accepted two-hour loading and unloading window, roughly 3.4 hours in all (84 FR 26933). ATRI's driver survey found detention far more often, on 39.3% of stops in 2023, because the two studies measured different samples and years. At the ports, dwell is measured in days, not hours: local container dwell at the San Pedro Bay ports averaged 2.75 days (PMSA, September 2025). Most yards do not measure their own dwell at all — which is the first problem to fix. The federal auditors said the same thing about the industry as a whole:

"Accurate industrywide data on driver detention do not currently exist because most industry stakeholders measure only time spent at a shipper or receiver's facility beyond the limit established in shipping contracts—often 2 hours."

— U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General, Report No. ST2018019, January 31, 2018

The cost of a truck sitting still

The marginal cost to run a truck reached $90.89 an hour (about $2.336 a mile), the highest ATRI has recorded (2025 update, 2024 data). And the gate line is a safety number too. In the words of the federal audit itself:

"We estimated that a 15-minute increase in average dwell time—the total time spent by a truck at a facility—increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2 percent. In addition, we estimated that detention is associated with reductions in annual earnings of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion for for-hire commercial motor vehicle drivers in the truckload sector."

— U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General, Report No. ST2018019, January 31, 2018

Labor, records & compliance

A held dock door is staffed labor at a median $19.12 an hour for warehouse material movers (BLS OEWS, May 2023). Hand-transcription is not free either: across one large study, 3.7% of hand-keyed entries did not match the automated source (JAMIA, 2019). And the record outlives the shift — customs records must be kept and produced on demand for five years (19 CFR 163.4), while a cargo claim can arrive up to nine months after delivery (49 U.S.C. 14706).

Frequently asked

Related: log a wait anonymously (YardPulse) · detention calculator · driver detention pay calculator · reduce detention charges · what a YMS costs · why detention invoices go unpaid · records that win a detention claim · what good turnaround time looks like