Trucking company audit Good drivers apply to several carriers at once. The slowest call loses them.

In a fleet, a load crosses three finish lines. The TMS status, backed by the ELD and GPS record, says delivered. QuickBooks, or the factor’s portal, says billed. The remittance says paid. The money waits in the gaps between them: the packet missing one document, the accessorial missing its proof, the deduction nobody questioned.

None of it shows up as a loss on the P&L: a late invoice still gets paid, and detention never billed was never booked. The Review reads the three dates side by side, load by load, and counts what sits between them.

Detention — the hours a truck waits past the free time at a shipper or receiver — costs the fleet driver time and equipment time whether or not anyone bills it. It reaches revenue only when it reaches an invoice, with the times that support it.

Getting detention paid starts inside the fleet, with proof. A detention charge that carries arrival and departure times against the free time on the rate con is harder to dispute than one that rests on a driver’s text. The ELD logs the time and location of each duty-status change, and many telematics platforms add GPS arrival and departure at a facility; the Review counts how many of those hours reached a billing line. Hours are only half of it. Many rate confirmations attach conditions to detention — notice to the broker before free time runs out, an on-time arrival for the appointment, a signed out-time — so the Review reads each rate con’s terms next to the recorded hours, and counts separately the hours lost to a missed condition and the hours that met every condition and still never reached an invoice.

When a broker sits between the fleet and the shipper, there is a paper trail on that side too. Federal rule 49 CFR 371.3 requires a broker to keep a record of each brokered transaction for three years, including the compensation the broker received and the freight charges it collected, and gives each party to the transaction the right to review it. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration noted in its 2024 proposed rule on broker transparency that contracts between brokers and motor carriers frequently contain waivers of that right. Whether the fleet’s contracts keep the right, and whether to use it, is the owner’s call, with counsel. Not legal advice.

Truckload operating margins are thin. Fuel, payroll and settlements go out on their own schedule, whatever the invoice date, so every day an invoice waits is a day the fleet finances its customer.

Lane reports carry the same trap. Revenue per loaded mile flatters a lane that needs a long deadhead to reach it. A lane that looks strong per loaded mile can run negative once deadhead, dwell and days-to-pay are counted, and on a thin margin one such lane can absorb the profit of several good ones.

Export last week’s delivered loads from the TMS or the dispatch sheet. Next to each load, write two dates: delivered (the TMS status or the ELD) and invoiced (the QuickBooks invoice date, or the day it went to the factor). One week takes about 30 to 60 minutes (an estimate).

A blank invoice date on a delivered load is finished work sitting unbilled today. A gap of several days is fuel and payroll carried for a customer. If the delivered date itself cannot be found, no record owns the moment the load was done, and that is the first finding.

The fix that costs nothing is a name, not a hire: one person already in the building owns “delivered → invoiced.” At a fixed time every afternoon, that person pulls every load that delivered that day and either sends the invoice or writes on the load the one missing document and who is getting it. Detention, lumper and TONU go on the same invoice as the line haul, or get a written reason, before the load is closed.

• Brokers must keep a record of each brokered transaction for three years, and each party to the transaction has the right to review it

  Source: 49 CFR § 371.3, Records to be kept by brokers, 2026

• Transparency in Property Broker Transactions (proposed rule) · Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Federal Register, 2024