Your ELD already has the proof. Nobody's using it to get you paid
Your truck sits four hours at a dock, so you earned detention. Then the claim dies anyway, because notice went out late, or the in and out times never made it onto the BOL, or nobody had 40 minutes to chase $200. That isn't a billing problem. It's a deadline problem, and deadlines are what software is actually good at.
Detention isn't lost in the argument. It's lost in the first 30 minutes.
Most rate cons give you a narrow window after free time expires to put the broker on notice. Miss it and the hours are gone, no matter how long the truck actually sat or how right you are. That window is where most of the write-offs happen.
$15.1B
What detention cost the trucking industry in a single year. Every dollar of it is hours a driver already sat through.
Source: ATRI, September 2024
Under half
The share of detention invoices that ever get paid. Most of the rest die on a technicality, not on the merits.
Source: ATRI, September 2024
$2,700
Per truck, per year. That is what one 8-truck fleet came up with after adding up a year of detention nobody ever got around to filing: $21,500.
Source: Owner-operator forum, self-reported
Watch the load, beat the deadline, bring the receipts.
The same three steps on every load, running whether anyone at your shop is thinking about detention that day or not.
The rate con gets read first
Free time, hourly rate, the cap, and exactly how and when the broker has to be notified. Every broker writes it differently and it's buried in the fine print. Those terms get pulled off the PDF before the truck ever rolls.
The clock starts at the gate
Your ELD already logs the minute the truck arrives and the minute it leaves. When free time runs out, the broker gets put on notice inside the window the rate con requires, with the GPS attached. Your driver gets a text too: get the in and out times signed.
The claim goes out with proof attached
GPS trail, duty logs, the signed BOL, the rate con terms, hours times rate. You approve it, it goes out, and it gets chased until it's paid or denied in writing.
This is new, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
I'm building this right now, with a small number of Chicago-area carriers, for free. There are no case studies on this site, no logos, and no promises about how much it recovers, because I don't have that number yet. Getting it honestly is the entire point of the pilots.
If you want a polished deck and a testimonial page, that's every other vendor calling your office this week. If you'd rather be one of the few fleets that helps build the thing and keeps every dollar it recovers, that's what I have.
An automation engineer in Evanston, not a claims agency.
I'm Kellan. I build AI and automation systems for a software company, and that's exactly what this is: the evidence already exists on every truck you run, the deadline is the whole game, and nobody at a 20-truck fleet has time to sit and watch it. Everything I know about how detention really works came from carriers telling me. That's still how I'd rather learn it.
“You don't have to let brokers track you. Your ELD already tracks you, for you. Let's make it pay.”
Kellan, Founder of MasterDesk
Evanston, Illinois
Tell me how it actually works.
15 minutes, and most of it is me asking questions. How detention goes at your fleet, what the brokers deny, what you've given up chasing. If what you describe sounds buildable, I'll offer to build it on a couple of your trucks for free. That's the whole pitch.