A trucking company's GPS platform reports when each truck enters and leaves a customer's site. The automation logs the times on the job, calculates waiting time and adds a detention charge with GPS timestamps when it passes the contract's free time.
Typical results
≈4 hrs/wk
Office time no longer spent chasing driver logs
2 hrs
Free time per stop, applied from each contract
100%
Detention lines backed by GPS timestamps
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Contracts allow 2 hours of free time at a customer's dock, then charge for waiting. In practice drivers note times on paper or forget, the office rarely has proof, and most detention goes unbilled. When a charge is invoiced, customers dispute it because there is nothing to show when the truck actually arrived.
Before and after
Billable waiting time actually invoiced
2.6×Office hours on waiting time logs per week
−80%Detention charges disputed per month
−83%The automation
Make listens to geofence events from the fleet's GPS tracking platform. When a truck enters or leaves a customer's site, it writes the arrival and departure times on the job row in Google Sheets and calculates the waiting time. If waiting passes the 2 hours of free time in the contract, it adds a detention charge line with the GPS timestamps, ready for the month's invoice.
How it works
- 01
Truck enters the site
The GPS tracking platform reports when a truck enters a customer's site geofence and when it leaves.
- 02
Times written on the job
Arrival and departure times are written on the matching job row in Google Sheets.
- 03
Waiting time calculated
The automation calculates time on site and compares it with the 2 hours of free time in the contract.
- 04
Detention line added
When waiting passes the free time, a detention charge line with the GPS timestamps is added for the month's invoice.
Starts from
- GPS geofence events
Delivers
- Arrival and departure on job
- Detention charge line
- GPS timestamps as proof
The impact
About 90% of billable waiting time now reaches the invoice, up from roughly a third, and each charge comes with GPS timestamps the customer can check. The office saves around 4 hours a week of chasing driver logs, and disputes over detention become rare.
Questions about this automation
How does it know which job a truck is on?
Each job row in Google Sheets lists the truck and the customer site for that day. When the GPS platform reports a geofence entry, the automation matches the truck and site to the open job, so times land on the right row without any input from the driver.
Can free time and rates differ by customer?
Yes. Each customer's free time and hourly detention rate sit on a settings tab. The calculation reads them per job, so a customer with 3 hours of free time or a different rate is billed on its own terms. Simple automations like this are usually live within days.
What if the GPS signal drops at the site?
If an entry or exit event is missing, the job row is flagged instead of guessed, and the office can add the time from the driver or the delivery note. Detention lines are only created from complete pairs of timestamps, so customers never see a charge without proof.