🇺🇸United States

Unbilled detention and accessorials tied to undocumented or inaccurate driver time logs

3 verified sources

Definition

Petroleum and fuel carriers often have contractual rights to charge detention or accessorial fees when drivers wait at terminals or customer sites, but if time on site is not accurately captured in HOS or telematics records, these billable items are missed. Fleet compliance and telematics vendors emphasize precise time and location tracking and automated reporting, which is explicitly used to support billing and prove on-site times; without this, time-based charges go unbilled.[4][6][7]

Key Findings

  • Financial Impact: $10,000–$50,000 per year in missed detention and accessorial revenue for a mid‑sized wholesale petroleum fleet, based on typical detention rates and under-billing reported in fleet analytics use cases.
  • Frequency: Weekly
  • Root Cause: Driver hours and arrival/departure times are often recorded only in paper logs or loosely in dispatch notes that are not tied into billing workflows. Petroleum-focused TMS and fleet management solutions promote real-time location and status tracking specifically for hazmat/fuel fleets to support accurate invoices and charge validation, indicating that unintegrated or inaccurate time tracking directly causes recurring revenue leakage.[4][6][7]

Why This Matters

This pain point represents a significant opportunity for B2B solutions targeting Wholesale Petroleum and Petroleum Products.

Affected Stakeholders

Billing and AR clerks, Dispatchers, Fleet manager, Sales/account managers, Drivers

Deep Analysis (Premium)

Financial Impact

$10,000–$30,000 annually in missed accessorial and delivery charges ($50–100/hour for retail fuel delivery) due to incomplete time documentation; high-volume locations with 1–4 hour unload times frequently unbilled • $10,000–$30,000/year in unbilled detention; delayed cash flow; potential contract penalties for under-invoicing • $10,000–$40,000 per year in conservative under-billing and unclaimed detention/accessorials on municipal contracts for a mid-sized petroleum carrier, plus hidden costs from staff time and legal/administrative effort needed when a contested invoice must be defended without clear time-log evidence.

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Current Workarounds

Commodity Trader dispatcher logs approximate time in paper manifest; marine customer provides bill of lading with arrival time only; departure time left undocumented or estimated • Commodity Trader driver estimates wait time verbally to dispatcher; handwritten note on invoice or nothing recorded; construction site foreman unaware of billing implications • Commodity Trader driver records approximate time on delivery ticket or forgets; agricultural site uses no formal time-in/time-out system; billing based on assumed standard delivery window

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Methodology & Sources

Data collected via OSINT from regulatory filings, industry audits, and verified case studies.

Evidence Sources:

Related Business Risks

Civil penalties for Hours-of-Service and DOT driver violations in petroleum transport fleets

$50,000–$300,000 per year in fines and related cost of poor CSA scores for a mid‑sized petroleum/fuel fleet (derived from typical FMCSA HOS civil penalty ranges and industry case examples for hazmat carriers).

Excessive overtime and administrative labor from manual HOS log handling

$5,000–$20,000 per month in avoidable admin and supervisor labor for a 50–150‑truck petroleum fleet, based on typical hours required for manual log review versus automated ELD systems and industry ROI claims.

Lost hauling capacity due to unoptimized driver hours and HOS violations

$20,000–$100,000 per year in lost margin for a mid‑sized fuel carrier due to out-of-service events, missed or delayed loads, and underutilized driver hours, based on typical daily revenue per petroleum truck and industry estimates of utilization lift from HOS visibility.

Rework and incident costs from poor driver inspection and documentation quality

$5,000–$30,000 per year in avoidable roadside repair, repeat inspection, and incident-related costs for a small to mid‑sized petroleum fleet, based on industry claims of violation and defect-repair reduction from digital DVIR systems.

Delayed invoicing due to slow validation of driver logs and trip documentation

$50,000–$200,000 in working capital tied up for a mid‑sized wholesale petroleum carrier due to several extra days of DSO attributable to slow document collection and validation.

Logbook manipulation and HOS cheating enabled by paper-based processes

$10,000–$100,000 per year in combined costs from citations, accident liability exposure, and investigative/disciplinary actions for a petroleum carrier with systemic log falsification issues.

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