Northeast Freight Time one clock, four readings

What We Still Don't Know

A site that spends its time correcting other people's figures owes an account of where its own confidence runs out. For another workplace-measurement reference, wage percentage calculator.

The short version is that the regulator has already given it: FMCSA states that little public data exists and that there is no standard definition of the central term. Almost everything below follows from those two sentences. For complementary transport data and research, see MHI.

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

The six

The distribution. Averages are published and distributions are not. Whether detention is a broad tax across all facilities or a concentrated problem at a minority of them is unknown, and the two imply completely different policy and commercial responses.

Whether it is getting better or worse. The federal figures are snapshots from 2014 and 2018. There is no time series. Claims that detention has improved or deteriorated since are assertions.

The true cost. The $1.1–1.3 billion driver income figure is an estimate of one component. Nobody has quantified the equipment cost, the uncovered-load cost, or the share billed under other names — and the last of those is probably large.

The causal chain to crashes. The association between dwell and crash rate is measured. The mechanism — hours consumed, later driving, schedule pressure — is plausible and has not been tested directly.

What free time should be. No study has established the right allowance for any commodity or operation. Two hours has no evidentiary basis at all, and neither does any proposed alternative, including the ones on this site.

And facility-level variation. The question every operator actually has — is my dwell normal for this kind of facility — has no published answer and will not get one.

Why the gaps persist

No jurisdiction. FMCSA regulates safety, the FMC regulates ocean billing, and nobody regulates commercial time definitions in domestic trucking.

No incentive to produce it. Precise measurement is unwelcome to most parties who could generate it.

And the definitional problem comes first. You cannot build a time series for a quantity that has no agreed definition, so the measurement gap is downstream of the definition gap rather than parallel to it.

What this site can honestly claim

Definitions, with attribution. FMCSA's taxonomy is published and quotable.

Federal findings, with their stated limitations. Including the ones the agencies name themselves.

Regulatory mechanics. The FMC rule, what survived the 2025 ruling, and what the windows are — these are documents, not estimates.

Industry figures, labelled as self-reported with their year and population.

And reasoning. Much of the operational advice here — free time set to the operation, the four yard segments, the six-column log — is reasoning from mechanism and practice, not from studies. Where that is the case the article says so.

What it cannot claim

An industry-wide detention figure for today.

That any specific allowance is correct.

That a particular intervention produces a particular improvement, in hours or in dollars.

Or that your operation resembles anyone's average.

Anyone in this field stating those confidently is stating them past what the government believes is known — which is a short, checkable sentence and the most useful thing on this page.

What would change it

A federal study sampling proportionally, including small fleets rather than mostly large carriers as the 2014 work did. FMCSA's proposed follow-up covering roughly 80 carriers and 2,500 drivers is the closest thing pending.

Published facility-level distributions. Nobody will publish them, and they would resolve more than anything else on this list.

And an agreed definition, which is the precondition for everything above and has no obvious source.

None of the three is likely soon. Which is why defining it in your own contracts and measuring your own operation is not a workaround — it is the whole available answer.

The short version