Real-Time Exception Management: Avoid Detention Fees with FTM

Stop losing money to detention fees. Real-time exception management is the key to preventing small disruptions from snowballing into costly problems. Discover how FTM’s real-time alerts help brokers, carriers, and shippers catch exceptions early and keep operations moving. In freight, minutes matter. When a truck sits for too long on the dock, you’re expediting wasted minutes and you’re paying for it. Detention fees are silent killers for profit. As a broker working with multiple carriers or as a shipper coordinating dock schedules, you could miss an exception to accepted detention fees that can cost you hundreds of dollars in penalties.

That’s exactly where real-time exception management with FTM Alerts comes in.

The Problem: Detention Eats Margins

In a fast-moving network, things go wrong. Drivers show up late. Shippers hold trucks. Receivers miss appointments. People miss small issues that break out of the plan, and these exceptions build quickly. If not caught at the initial solution step, they snowball into detention fees, missed reloads, unhappy partners, etc.

And let’s be clear: no one wins with detention.

The FTM Solution: Real-Time Exception Management

FTM doesn’t wait until the problem hits your invoice. It catches exceptions before they become expenses.

Proactive Alerts That Actually Matter

When efforts lead to an issue, FTM sends an alert immediately. The Alerts Engine tracks every Stop, every Load, every minute. If shipments are in jeopardy of hitting a service window and the truck stops checking in or just sits there too long, FTM sends an alert right out of the gate, and as soon as you get the alert, you’ll already know before the pickup is late, after appointment windows have come and gone, and before you’ve hit detention thresholds, you’ll have advance notice before conditions allow it to become a problem.

Action, Not Aftermath

Every alert can trigger a workflow. Reassign loads. Message carriers. Flag customer service. It’s not just visibility, it’s operational defense.

Benefits That Hit the Bottom Line

1. Stop Paying for Avoidable Delays

If a carrier arrives at a pickup late, and the system notifies you 20 minutes before detention kicks in, you save yourself $100 or more. That’s one alert. Now do that over your weekly volume.

2. Protect Your Carrier and Customer Relationships

Detention is one of the top sources of carrier frustration. With real-time exception management, you can be proactive to get ahead of problems, reroute resources, and allow your partners the benefit of real-time communication.

3. Let Data Drive Your Planning

Over time, FTM brings attention to trends, including: Which docks are routinely late? Which lanes are hot? Which shippers over-promise and under-deliver? Take those insights and use the data for negotiating, planning, and just avoiding the mistakes all over again.

Use Cases That Make a Difference

Broker in a tight-market lane: The alert fires when a consignee holds a truck beyond the planned dwell time. The ops team reallocates the load in real time, avoiding a late delivery and a detention fee.
Shipper with multiple carriers and loads: The FTM flags 3 loads in the risk range for detention. The live dashboard reveals which loads are trended toward delay. The warehouse staff adjusts dock assignments. Avoided fees.
Carrier dispatcher: A missed ELD check-in triggers an alert. The dispatcher follows up, realizing the shipper hasn’t begun loading. The dispatcher alerts the team. Detention documentation is initiated immediately.

How FTM Fits Into Your Operation

Smart Alerts: Establish limits for stop time, geofence breach, and exception categories that are customizable
Live Visibility: Access the full GPS & geofencing information with status updates in real-time
Custom Workflows: Initiate your own task flows, driver messaging and internal triggers
Analytics Layer: Record detention events by lane, customer or carrier so that you can improve your strategy going forward.

Plug Into Your Ecosystem

FTM works well with your entire logistics stack. From load boards to accounting software and routing to routing engines, FTM has user-friendly integrations with the platforms you already know and use.

Connections to systems like Truckstop keep your capacity and pricing in sync while integration with FedEx gives you exceptional visibility across parcel and freight, eliminating tab-switching and time lapses.

FTM will also integrate with any of the other leading tools across visibility, accounting, navigation, and TMS workflows, bringing everything together into one real-time operating engine.

Catch the Exception Before It Costs You

You can’t fix what you can’t see. With FTM’s real-time exception management, you don’t just see the exceptions, you stop them in their tracks.

Start catching problems before they become penalties. Schedule your free demo today.

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Real-Time Exception Management: Avoiding Detention Fees with FTM Alerts