Whenever we’re talking about detention, we always list the things that you can do to get more money in your pocket. Some of these tips are:
- Use your detention stamps
- Give accurate arrival and departure times
- Communicate any delays on your load to your fleet manager – no matter how small
- Scan in each and every document from a trip into imaging
With all your efforts, last week we were able to pay out $250,607 in detention pay to our drivers!
Today, I’m going to focus on a detention example where the driver did everything right, and it ended up earning him over $230 in detention.
Our driver arrived on time to the shipping location and was having issues with getting his load. The shipper told our driver that his load was supposed to be picked up the next day, and he would need to come back. The driver contacted his fleet manager, who then got with sales to figure out what was going on. All the while the driver’s time was dwindling away.
Since he was told to come back later by the customer, the logs at their location only showed him there for two hours total. That amount of time didn’t include the fact that the driver had to wait overnight until sales could get with the customer to sort everything out, so the original detention request was denied.
Luckily, the driver was able to get the employee’s name who told him that his shipment was for the next day and passed the information along to his fleet manager. While doing the audit of the detention, our detention associate found that message and used it to fight for the driver’s time and get the detention approved.
Three simple messages to his fleet manager about the issue earned this driver $230 in his pocket:
Communication is key in these situations. If we don’t know what’s going on, we can’t help you earn more money in detention.
Written by Chris Stewart
Chris Stewart has been at Prime since December of 2014. He works in our Sales Department to help audit detention. Chris is a graduate of Missouri State University in Springfield, MO and received a Bachelors Degree in Information Technology Service Management in 2011. Fun Fact about Chris: he likes to design websites and build his own computers in his spare time.
