Truck drivers wait an average of 2.5 hours at warehouses without getting paid — here are the 20 cities where truckers wait the longest

• Truckers lose $1.3 billion in wages annually waiting at warehouses for loads.
• On average, truck drivers waited at a shipping dock for 2.5 hours per job in 2018, according to data from FreightWaves SONAR.
• It points to inefficiencies in the trucking industry, FreightWaves chief insight officer Dean Croke told Business Insider.

As a long-haul truck driver in Australia, FreightWaves chief insight officer Dean Croke spent most Sundays waiting for six to seven hours for grocery loads.

“You hear people bellyaching about the driver shortage,” Croke told Business Insider, but he said those same industry leaders aren’t looking at a key inefficiency in the trucking industry – the hours per week that truck drivers spend waiting for loads.

Read more: The US has a major truck driver shortage – but the co-founder of a trucking startup that’s attracted $80 million in funding says there are 3 other problems that are making the shortage seem worse than it is

One way to look at detention times is to parse out the locations in which truckers are waiting the longest. Truckers waited at shipping docks for 2.5 hours per job on average in 2018, according to June FreightWaves SONAR data from its 135 markets. The average wait was as high as 4.7 hours in El Paso, Texas.

According to a survey administered by the freight marketplace DAT Solutions that polled drivers from 257 trucking companies, only 3% of truckers said they receive detention pay for at least 90% of their claims to the shippers.

Here are the cities with the 20 worst detention times, according to FreightWaves:

20. Cape Girardeau, Missouri — an average of 172 minutes

19. Louisville, Kentucky — an average of 174 minutes

18. (tie) Decatur, Alabama, and Erie, Pennsylvania — an average of 175 minutes

17. Little Rock, Arkansas — an average of 176 minutes

16. (tie) Greensboro, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia — an average of 177 minutes

15. Reno, Nevada — an average of 180 minutes

14. (tie) Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Laredo, Texas — an average of 182 minutes

13. (tie) Lakeland, Florida, and Fort Wayne, Indiana — an average of 184 minutes

12. Las Vegas, Nevada — an average of 189 minutes

11. Bloomington, Illinois — an average of 190 minutes

10. Knoxville, Tennessee — an average of 195 minutes

9. Fayetteville, Arkansas — an average of 197 minutes

8. Raleigh, North Carolina — an average of 200 minutes

7. Portland, Oregon — an average of 201 minutes

6. Winchester, Virginia — an average of 202 minutes

5. (tie) Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Green Bay, Wisconsin — an average of 205 minutes

4. South Bend, Indiana — an average of 226 minutes

3. Fresno, California — an average of 261 minutes

2. Rochester, New York — an average of 267 minutes

1. El Paso, Texas — an average of 280 minutes