New The detention calculator is live. Find out what you billed and never collected. Open the calculator

The template is free.
The [timestamp] is the product.

Everyone hands out freight forms. Nobody hands you the record of when the truck arrived, when your free hours ran out, and who wrote it down. We build that record first, because it is the thing every piece of software downstream needs and nobody captures.

Open the detention calculator

Twelve generators, unlimited PDFs, no account and no card. Nothing to fill in before the download.

Load TR-7702 · Detention clock Recording
08:12Arrived
10:12Free time ends
13:47Departed
3h 35m billable at $65/hr  ·  $232.92 3 sources

*This is a simulation. Your own loads produce the same record.

A tractor-trailer running an interstate at dusk, other trucks spread along the lanes behind it.
The leak

Two ways freight loses money on paper. Both start the same way.

Nobody recorded the time, and nobody kept the file. A PDF does not fix either one. A dated, exportable record fixes both.

A logistics terminal at dusk: numbered dock doors with forklifts working inside, tractor-trailers backed in, more units queued on the apron.
Every truck on this apron is either running its free hours down or already past them. Those hours get billed and collected, or quietly absorbed, and the only thing that decides which is whether somebody wrote down the time.

Detention

US fleets that bill for detention
94.5%
Share of it they actually collect
under 50%
Invoiced, then written off, per year ATRI
$15,100,000,000
“I was never told what time the appointment was, when the 2 free hours expired, or when detention started accruing.” Carrier, r/logistics

Carrier vetting

Checks the broker ran
USDOT, MC, insurance, OOS
Checks kept on file with a date
none
Paid by the broker’s insurer anyway TIA
$650,000
“Opposing counsel looks for holes in the broker’s process.” Freight counsel, industry thread

Detention figures: American Transportation Research Institute, driver detention research. Carrier vetting: Transportation Intermediaries Association, State of Fraud in the Industry, and the US Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General.

The tools
How proof works

A claim is not a document. It is a chain.

Each tool writes one link, and each link cites the one before it. Run the load through all five and the claim assembles itself, because the record was built while the load was moving rather than reconstructed afterward.

Rate confirmation01 / 05

Sets the detention rate and the free hours in writing, before the truck moves. Without this number there is nothing to calculate later.

Trip sheet02 / 05

The driver logs arrival and departure at each stop. Times carry their source (gate log, ELD ping, or hand entry), so nothing is anonymous.

Proof of delivery03 / 05

Signature, seals, and the two times kept apart. The POD confirms what the trip sheet claimed, from the receiver's side.

Detention calculator04 / 05

Subtracts the free hours, applies the agreed rate, and prints the timeline that shows the arithmetic. Nothing to take on faith.

Claim pack05 / 05

The demand letter, the timeline, and numbered exhibits in one file, ready to send. This is the link we build for you.

What the software does

AI cannot read a time nobody wrote down.

Every automation promise in freight dies in the same place: the data was never captured. A model can summarise a rate confirmation it is given. It cannot recover the hour a driver spent at a dock that no one logged. That is why the record comes first, and the software second.

What catuh software does today and what is still being built
CapabilityWhat it doesStage
Document generation Twelve freight forms, each carrying the one field that decides the dispute. Assembled in your browser, so the load data never reaches us. Live
Detention arithmetic The timeline and the amount, with the source of every hour and the clause the clock runs against. Live
Claim assembly A demand letter, the timeline and numbered exhibits, built from records you already generated. Done by hand today, which is why it is the one thing we charge for. Live
Document reading A rate confirmation or a signed BOL arrives by email and the fields come out of it, including handwritten exception notes, without anyone retyping a load number. Building
Timestamped carrier vetting USDOT, MC, insurance and out-of-service status checked at the moment of award and filed with the date, so the file is a defence rather than a formality. Building
Intake agent The document lands in the TMS you already pay for, with the exceptions flagged for a human and nothing else asking for attention. Planned
Three of these work today. The other three are labelled because they do not. No integration is promised before it exists

We label the unfinished ones on purpose. A tool that claims a capability it does not have is the same failure as a rate confirmation that leaves out the detention rate: it reads fine until the day it has to hold up.

Claim pack

Send us three detention claims nobody paid.

Forward whatever you have: emails, ELD screenshots, the signed BOL, the rate con. We assemble the file: a demand letter quoting your own accessorial clause, a timeline where every hour names its source, numbered exhibits, and the arithmetic with free hours already deducted.

Your TMS issues the detention invoice. It does not build the file that makes the invoice collectible. That is the whole gap.

Send three claims

Collection agencies take 25–35% and turn down a $400 detention claim before they finish reading it. Those are the ones we take.

Claim pack · TR-7702Assembled
  1. Demand letterAccessorial clause quoted
  2. Event timeline3 sources
  3. Exhibit A, signed BOL08:12
  4. Exhibit B, gate log13:47
  5. Exhibit C, rate confirmation$65/hr, 2h free
  6. Amount claimed$232.92

*This is a simulation, built from the same five links above.

Questions

What people ask before they trust a form with a load.

Short answers, and where the numbers come from. If you only take one thing: the document is free, and it is the record behind it that gets you paid.

What is detention in trucking?
Detention is the money a carrier is owed when a truck waits at a shipper or receiver beyond the free time agreed in the rate confirmation, typically two hours. After that window the detention rate accrues, usually by the hour. Whether it gets paid depends entirely on whether the arrival and departure times were recorded and by whom.
How much detention goes uncollected?
The American Transportation Research Institute measures that 94.5% of fleets bill for detention and collect on less than half of it. That is roughly $15.1 billion a year invoiced and then written off, largely because nobody recorded the times in a form the payer would accept.
How do I prove a detention claim?
A detention claim is a chain, not a document. The rate confirmation sets the detention rate and the free hours in writing before the truck moves. The trip sheet logs arrival and departure at each stop with the source of each time. The proof of delivery confirms those times from the receiver side. Only then does the arithmetic hold up, because the record was built while the load was moving rather than reconstructed afterwards.
Who pays detention, the broker or the shipper?
Whoever the rate confirmation says. In practice the broker pays the carrier and recovers from the shipper or receiver that caused the delay, but that only works if the accessorial clause names a detention rate and free hours. If the rate confirmation is silent on detention, there is no number to enforce.
How long do I have to file a cargo claim?
Under the Carmack Amendment a shipper generally has nine months from delivery to file a written claim with the carrier, and two years and one day from the claim being declined to file suit. Signing a clean bill of lading at pickup, with no exceptions noted, makes that claim substantially harder to win.
Does catuh use AI?
For the part where it helps. Reading an inbound rate confirmation or a signed bill of lading and pulling the fields out of it is work software should do, and that is being built. Deciding what a load is worth is not. The thing to understand is the order: a model can summarise a document it is handed, but it cannot recover an hour nobody logged, so the dated record has to come first and the automation second.
Do I need an account to download the PDF?
No. Every generator produces unlimited PDFs with no account, no card and no watermark. The document is assembled in your browser, which means the load data never reaches a catuh server at all.
Contact

Let's talk.

Tell us how much detention you billed last month, and how much of it came in. If those two numbers match, you do not need us.

Email support@catuh.com