What is a good truck turnaround time?

It depends on the facility. The Port of Los Angeles pays its container terminals $3.00 per TEU for a monthly average of 35 minutes or less; its terminals averaged 1.15 hours in 2024, waiting included.

What is the difference between turnaround time and detention?

Turnaround time measures how long a truck is at the facility. Detention is the charge once that time passes the free time agreed — ATRI counts detention as a stop longer than 2 hours.

How can a facility cut truck turnaround time?

Book every truck into a slot and prenotify it before it arrives. Rotterdam's short-sea terminals found correctly prenotified trucks finished over twenty minutes faster on average.

Term

Truck turnaround time

Truck turnaround time is how long a truck spends at a terminal or facility, from completing gate-in to completing gate-out. At the Port of Los Angeles, trucks averaged 1.15 hours on container terminals in 2024, waiting included. Long turns cost carriers money: US drivers met detention on 39.3% of stops in 2023.

Also called truck turn time, turnaround time, TAT, truck dwell time, turn timeUpdated 13 October 2026

Where the clock starts

Measure	Starts	Ends
TIC 4.0 terminal standard	Gate-in completed	Gate-out completed
Port of Los Angeles inventory	Waiting for terminal entry	Departing the terminal
ATRI detention research	Arrival at the customer	Departure — detention counted after 2 hours

Three sources, three clocks — so their figures don't compare directly. The Los Angeles average of 1.15 hours across 4,259,961 container-terminal calls ranged from 0.61 to 1.37 hours by terminal. At Rotterdam's short-sea terminals, trucks that were correctly prenotified finished their visits over twenty minutes faster on average.

What long turns cost

ATRI estimates that US for-hire trucking lost as much as $11.5 billion in revenue to detention at customer facilities in 2023, and $3.6 billion more in unreimbursed expenses. Truckload carriers were paid detention fees for only 43.5 percent of their detention incidents, so most of the cost of a slow turn never appears on an invoice.

Worked example: a port that pays for speed

Terminal averages 35 minutes or less in a month → $3.00 per loaded or empty TEU · 50,000 trucked TEU × $3.00 = $150,000 for the month

The Port of Los Angeles' permanent turn-time incentive, from 1 September 2025. A terminal that cuts its turn time by 10% on the year earns $1.25 per TEU instead. The port estimated it paid $9,115,974 under the programme in fiscal 2025.

The mistake people make

Comparing turn times measured on different clocks. A terminal that starts at gate-in leaves out the queue outside, which the Los Angeles figures include and ATRI's detention counts begin from. Agree with carriers which events start and stop the clock before turnaround time goes into a contract.

FAQ