From Bottleneck to Industry Standard: Tackling Dwell Time in the Supply Chain

Dwell time in trucking can lead to missed delivery deadlines and unnecessary hollding costs, negatively affecting the entire supply chain. Excessive, unexpected dwell times can disrupt fleet operations, delay schedules and threaten relationships with customers, all resulting in a loss of productivity and reduced profitability. But what exactly is dwell time in trucking and how can commercial transportation companies address the issue?

What is dwell time and detention?

Dwell time and its subset, detention time, are critical metrics for carriers to calculate. Dwell time is the total amount of time that a driver is at a shipper or receiver facility, including the time that they spend loading or unloading goods. The clock for dwell time starts as soon as they enter the facility, and the clock stops ticking once they leave the facility. This is the official dwell time definition and the core of its meaning.

Typically, drivers have about two hours of slack time to account for time spent at the facility when no action is taking place. Detention time starts after the slack time has passed, in this example at 2 hours, 1 minute. When this clock starts to tick, drivers have to qualify to request a dwell time or detention accessorial fee, where they can recoup some of the cost expended by sitting there idle.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) estimates that detention costs the industry more than $3 billion annually in lost time and productivity, while severely impacting driver pay.

The Ripple Effect of Dwell Time Problems

Dwell time is a longstanding industry problem, and is currently one of the top 10 critical issues facing the trucking industry, according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI). As the volume of goods transported via commercial trucks has grown, the dwell time problem has grown over the past five years and continues to inch up toward the top of the critical issues list, where it currently lands at number six in ATRI’s annual survey of transportation industry professionals. The issue of dwell time in trucking is a critical concern for operations and supply chain management.

One of the reasons for its ascent on the critical issues list is the recent hours of service (HOS) legislative changes that limit and define the available hours that a driver has on their clock for a given day, coupled with where they can safely drive. With these more stringent regulations it becomes imperative that drivers maximize the hours that they have on their clock and actually drive during that time, as opposed to sitting idle and waiting at a facility.

Since trucking was deregulated in the 1980s, dwell time has stimulated a cost issue that carriers are constantly trying to mitigate because most of the industry gets paid on a rate per mile – it’s only while the truck and driver are moving that revenue is coming in the door. While recently compounded by HOS legislation, dwell time concerns are long standing because of how carriers get paid in the marketplace and how drive time is utilized.

It’s not just legislation that’s putting pressure on the system, labor shortages at delivery locations can lead to disorganization at the receiving facility. If schedules and appointment windows aren’t managed properly and there are staffing shortages when it’s time to unload the truck, major problems can occur.

Challenges with dwell time reporting and pricing

Carriers are sometimes late due to traffic, weather and other events outside of their control. While everyone is striving to deliver on time, those arrival windows can often be missed and one late delivery can compound the issue. Problems can also arise around the lack of credibility on reporting dwell time, because for the most part it was previously self-reported.

Accessorial charges related to dwell time can also muddy the water. Accessorial charges mainly encompass the way carriers get paid for the driver waiting at the facility or while getting unloaded. They're all different and don’t adhere to any industry standard – every shipper has its own fee structure that they pay drivers for sitting at the origin or the destination location. This lackof standard creates problems in in detention time in trucking.

The absence of a standard creates widespread confusion regarding reimbursement, including how it is calculated and verified. In discussions with carriers, we’ve heard loud and clear that they often must jump through hoops to prove when they arrived and how long they were there for. Oftentimes, a driver may report one metric and the shipper reports another, making it difficult to record accurate times and align on payment. This is a common pain point with detention time in trucking.

Further, dwell time reporting methods themselves are also varied across the industry. Sometimes drivers create paper records with arrival and departure times. Sometimes GPS activities are used as a vehicle crosses a generic point radius polygon. However, even that technology can be imprecise with anywhere from a quarter mile to up to one mile around the generic polygon included in the radius, allowing for false positives by reporting that the driver is actually there when they're actually a mile away.

The Solution: Standardization and a source of truth for dwell time

Top of the line distribution centers work efficiently and do a great job at loading and unloading carriers. However, there are no industry standards in place for their activities and the only way to get to the root of dwell time problems is to gain clear lines of sight on what is transpiring at a facility once a vehicle arrives.

Our library of more than 4.7 million places across North America includes millions of detailed, true polygons around the perimeter of each site, giving a more accurate picture of when a driver actually enters a facility. Coupled with detailed entry and exit gate information, we’re able to better understand when vehicles arrive and depart, and then use this information to calculate average dwell time metrics for different facilities. This information then adds a new level of precision for route planners and dispatchers, enabling them to better know when and how dwell times might impact fleet movements before they depart from their place of origin. This helps reduce dwell time.

Trimble is uniquely positioned in this space as a neutral, third-party source of factual data based on its library of places, visibility into asset locations and tractor and trailer details. By bringing all these data points together, carriers have access to a true view of what happened at the facility. Over time, these metrics can help establish industry standards around dwell time, delivering a comprehensive, consistent data set able to provide broader analytical insights about transportation activities.

Impact of the solution: How to reduce dwell time and optimze supply chain management

During the early stages of a fleet’s daily workflow, dwell time can add a significant degree of uncertainty where drivers have limited visibility around how quickly they can get in and out of particular locations and what to expect when they arrive. That uncertainty ultimately translates to risk. Leveraging the Trimble Freight Visibility SOlution and Dock and Yard Management Solution (with Time Slot Management feature), helps to boost ETA visibility across the supply chain and reduce dwell time bottlenecks. Proactive dock scheduling helps limit the duration of loading and unloading at docks, enabling faster turnaround times.

By implementing these solutions, both shippers and carriers experience significant benefits.

Benefits for carriers

By receiving real-time updates on dock availability and precise scheduling, carriers benefit from reduced dwell times and optimized routes. This approach nto only decreases fuel consumption and operational costs but also increases driver productivity and fleet utilizaation. Together, these solutions foster a collaborative environment where shippers and carriers can work seamlessly, ultimately driving greater efficiency and profitability across the supply chain.

Benefits for shippers

The ability for shippers to proactively schedule dock appointments ensures that laodinig and unloading processes are streamlined, reducing congestion and minimizing delays. This efficiency leads to improved inventory management and faster order fulfillment, enhancing customer satisfaction.

How we move forward together

At the end of the day, dwell time visibility benefits both shippers and carriers in an industry that’s under duress. Following years of disruption, the transportation industry ranks high among those with the most job openings. One reason for that is the amount of waste that happens at these facilities when drivers are sitting there. The drivers aren't getting paid, they're not on their next load and that next load probably brings them back home.

The importance of truck driving jobs and the movement of goods keep our economy healthy. The stakes are high: if truck driving stopped in the U.S., in three days hospitals couldn’t keep running and in five days we would experience significant food shortages. The inefficient use of drivers can impact essential resources quickly, and it’s why addressing this industry-wide problem is so important. Because it all comes down to one driver, at one location, on one load and making sure that we can get them moving so everything can piece together from there.

Want to see how our solutions can help reduce dwell time? Request a demo today!