Most owner-operators do not lose profit due to bad rates. They lose profit due to incoherent unpaid time.
A load may appear acceptable from a paper. The miles make sense, the gross doesn’t seem insulting, and the lane does not appear unworkable. One way or another, then the clock begins stealing the week. You get to the shipper, and you wait. An hour turns into three. Delivery shifts to tomorrow. Broker cancels after you have already repositioned None of this is reflected in the advertised rate, but all of this affects your real income.
In trucking, time is revenue. Three little words determine if that time is paid or burned—detention, layover, and TONU—truck ordered, not used. Many drivers skim past these lines in the rate confirmation or assume that they are automatic. They are not. They are contractual, and when they are unclear or non-existent, the default result is typically no compensation.
Why This Matters More Now
Freight demand has normalized compared to the volatility of the early 2020s but congestion of docks and stacking appointments never really went away. At corridors that process large numbers of clients, multi-hour waits are still commonplace. A single unpaid three-hour delay per week doesn’t significantly impact the situation. Across the course of a year, it quietly translates to a number of whole working weeks that are lost to sitting and not moving.
The deceptive aspect of this problem is that it rarely appears to stem from a single bad decision. It would feel like some regular friction. A missed window here, a slowdown of a warehouse there, and there’s this ‘come back tomorrow’ message that seems to be temporary but ruins the schedule. Individually, these events appear manageable. Aggregated, they become structural profit erosion—the sort that doesn’t appear in your CPM but appears in your bank balance.
Detention: The Dock Clock That Keeps Running
Detention is compensation for waiting too long at the pick up or delivery after a pre-defined free window expires. The idea is simple, but the manner in which it is implemented is far from automatic. The agreement determines the amount, when they will be charged, and any increments that will be charged for them. If the count is vague or not there at all, the promise of detention is often lost in negotiated after-the-fact agreement.
Where a lack of precision causes drivers to lose money is not so often through not being available but rather through not being precise. A line that says “detention available” without a dollar figure leaves ambiguity. Ambiguity is to the advantage of the person with the invoice. Another common point of difference is documentation. Without written documentation of arrival and departure times, even a well-written detention clause can be hard to enforce.
Layover: When a One-Day Job Turns Into Two
Layover compensation is compensation when a shipment causes the truck to have to stop overnight due to a change in schedule. Unlike detention, which begins time accumulations by the hour, layover is associated with the calendar. A delivery that has been pushed into the next day changes the economics of the load. Fuel, parking, and the opportunity to reload are compounded.
Layovers are less common than detention, but their financial toll is greater when they occur. One unpaid overnight delay can neutralize the profit from several short hauls. The difficulty with layover language is that it is often written with conditionals instead of guarantees. Phrases such as “upon request” or “subject to approval” take the load off it being an entitlement and instead throw the ball to a persuasion.
TONU: Compensation for Work That Never Moves
TONU, short for truck ordered not used, is intended to safeguard carriers in the event that a shipment is canceled (after the order is made) or on arrival. It recognizes the actual fact that positioning miles and reserved time have worth although the freight may not transfer. In practice, carriers often overlook TONU until they urgently need it.
The financial impact of a cancellation is not limited to the immediate financial loss. It ruins the reload plan, it alters the weekly rhythm, and it brings in deadhead that may not be recoverable. Like many TONU-terms are undefined or subject to discretion, the carrier picks up risks that were never made visible in the original rate.
Where These Terms Actually Live
Compensation clauses not only tend to hide in those bottom sections of rate confirmations but are also embedded in legal verbiage and little print. The language might sound technical; however, the meaning is practical. Words like “approved,” “subject to” or “upon request” are signs that payment is negotiable rather than guaranteed. Many times the difference between a fixed dollar amount and an open-ended statement is all that stands between a delay and it being a revenue loss or a write-off.
This is why a review of a rate confirmation checklist before accepting a load is not income protection administrative overhead – it moves to protecting income. Difference in small words, and it changes the real outcome.
The Documentation Reality
In the case of disputes over detention or cancellations, memory counts for little. Timestamps do. Arrival records and the confirmation of the dock-in and departure notes lead to the formation of a factual trail that turns an application into a claim. Without them, the interpretation of compensation discussions becomes muddled. With them, they move towards resolution.
This phase is where the friction between many independent operators strikes the most. The process of keeping track of time is in competition with driving. The more fragmented the day is, the easier it would be for a lapse of administration to destroy a legitimate payment.
If keeping the timestamps, sending out mails for brokers, and following up on invoices do so to the point that they consume driving time, then many owner-operators find it desirable to turn this part of the driving process over to their own dispatcher so that they can keep their mind focused on miles rather than messages.
The Broker Conversation
There is a constant assumption that requesting detention or TONU injuries relations. In professional freight markets, the opposite is often the case. Clear, calm and written requests are part of the operation. The tone of the conversation is more important than the existence of the request itself. Precision maintains partnerships; vagueness stresses them.
For drivers who would rather not do these negotiations themselves, often working with dispatch support implies that broker communication and documentation occur in parallel to driving rather than instead of it. Not only do they help you have fewer awkward calls—they create consistency.
Where Dispatch Support Changes Outcomes
Independent operators do and can successfully negotiate on their own. Yet the benefit of exclusive dispatch support is that of consistency, not capability. A dispatcher tracks timepieces during the driving process. Patterns emerge over time: Which facilities are slow, which brokers are fast, and which lanes do brokers need to be tighter with their language before they accept? The result is not only improved rates but recovered compensation going off the radar.
This is exactly the same concept as staying out of spotting small leaks in profits throughout a week. Capturing an extra hour here and a cancelled load there may not seem, in the heat of the moment, like a very tactical victory, but it adds up over months.
The Larger Profit Equation
Trucking profitability is hardly ruined by one disastrous decision. It is eroding through accumulation. A few unpaid hours here and there this week, a canceled load there next month, a drive that seemed like an overnight stay at the time, had to happen. Each instance appears small. Together, they form a constant drain, which is hard to trace, as they never show up as one line item.
Understanding detention, layover, and TONU is not so much about learning terminology and more about realizing where revenue is hiding. The drivers that consider there are structural elements of every agreement in these clauses actually stabilize your weekly result. Those who treat them as the optional fine print do usually work longer hours for the same gross.
Protect the Week, Not Just the Load
Detention, layovers, and TONU are not rare exceptions—they are a part of modern freight operations. A few owner-operators handle all the negotiating and do the time stamping. Others prefer to work with dispatch support so documentation, communication between the broker, and the compensation follow-up are consistent while they are focused on driving and reload strategy.
If you’re already running out of rate verifications and that mindset looking out for time traps that don’t exist, the main way you can continue is a vital decision: looking at how many of those in isolation—and how much help to maintain keeping your week flowing nice and easy.
This Means Protect Your Time and Not Just Your Rate
Detention, layovers, and TONU aren’t rare occurrences—this is what modern freight is all about.
Some owner-operators do this on their own. Others are working with dispatch support to ensure documentation and negotiations are consistent while working on the road.
👉 Contact Triumph Fleet Services at www.TriumphFleetServices.com or call us at [+1 (682)900-3356]