The Truckers Domain
Calculators / Detention Cost Per Hour

Detention Cost Per Hour Calculator

A dock hold costs you from minute one, but you can’t bill it until the free hours burn off — and the industry bills detention below what it costs to sit. This shows the true cost per hour, the gap you’re eating, and the point to stop absorbing it and get the broker on the phone. Runs in your browser. Numbers stay on your machine.

Your rig Sets starting rate, idle burn, and earning power for the equipment type. Edit any field after.
Wheels-stopped time at this shipper or receiver, from gate-in. The cost clock starts here, not after free time.
hrs
Hours before detention is billable. Two is standard; some shippers write 1, some 3. Whatever the rate con says, not what feels fair.
hrs
On-duty time before this hold started. Detention runs on-duty, so it burns your 14-hour clock. Cross 14 and you forfeit the rest of today’s driving — a step change, not another hour.
hrs
What the rate con pays per hour after free time. Flatbed runs $60–$90, hotshot $50–$75. Industry-wide, fewer than half of detention claims actually get paid — this is the rate, not a guarantee.
$ /hr
Daily max the broker will pay, if any. The silent killer — many rate cons cap detention at $150–$250 no matter how long you sit. Leave at 0 if there’s no cap.
$
Margin you’d make in a productive hour if the truck were moving freight instead of sitting: revenue per hour minus the per-mile running cost of those miles. Most one-truck flatbed operators land $80–$110. Hotshot $65–$95.
$ /hr
What you actually pay at the pump. You burn fuel idling for HVAC the whole hold. Update this every run — on-highway diesel has run above $5 nationally through 2026.
$
Gallons per hour sitting with the engine running for heat or A/C. A Class 8 runs 0.8–1.0 (about 0.2 on an APU). A 1-ton hotshot runs 0.4–0.6.
gal/hr
Check this only if the broker killed the load after you were ordered. That triggers TONU (truck ordered not used), a separate flat fee, not detention.

Your cost clock and your bill clock are not the same clock

The free-time hours are free to the broker, not to you. Your truck is losing earning power from the minute the gate closes behind you. Detention only becomes billable after the free hours run off, and even then the rate is usually below what an hour of that truck is worth. Industry data puts the average detention rate billed to shippers at about $63 an hour against an average operating cost near $67. You are subsidizing the dock.

Why the cost isn’t a flat hourly

Detention runs on-duty. It burns your 14-hour clock even when you’re not driving. The hour that pushes you past 14 doesn’t cost another hour of margin — it forfeits the rest of the day’s driving and can force a reset. The calculator flags that step change instead of pretending hour five costs the same as hour two.

The number that matters is the gap

The big number is true cost per hour. The line under it is what you can bill and what you’re eating after that. A flatbed sitting four hours on two free is often eating $150–$250 in real cost it will never invoice, before counting whether the broker even pays the detention it does owe. Fewer than half of detention claims get collected.

When the result tells you to escalate

Hit the free-time mark and the tool tells you to notify the broker in writing — most rate cons void the detention claim if you don’t give notice at that point. Past the threshold where you’re eating more than an hour’s bill, or once the 14-hour clock is blown, it tells you to call for a rate increase on the load. If the broker cancels while you sit, check the box and it switches to TONU: a separate flat fee, typically $150–$250, that has nothing to do with detention.

Document or it didn’t happen

None of this is collectible without timestamps: gate-in and gate-out on the signed BOL, the facility app, or your ELD geofence. A true cost of $300 with no in/out times is a billable amount of zero. Get the times before you roll.

Want the spreadsheet version?

The full Rate Per Mile Calculator (Excel + Google Sheets) tracks detention, layover, and TONU by load alongside lane-by-lane deadhead and a weekly revenue target. Browse the Shop for launch updates.