Field notes
Reading Dwell Time at the Gate Before You Blame the Road
When a shipper asks why a van arrived late, the first instinct is to point at traffic. Sometimes that is fair. Often the minutes were already spent before the vehicle cleared the gate.
Start by marking three timestamps for each outbound run: arrival at the yard for loading, wheels rolling past the gate, and first customer stop. The gap between the first two is dwell. Chart that gap by hour of day across a full week. Clusters between 11:00 and 14:00 usually signal inbound unload conflicts or lunch-related paperwork piles rather than highway congestion.
Compare dwell with corridor time on the same days. If corridor time is stable while late codes rise, the yard deserves attention first. Bring the chart to the briefing with bay photos or a simple sketch of the gate queue so supervisors can argue from shared evidence.
Delivery exception reporting then stays honest: late-after-gate and late-before-gate become separate codes. That separation alone calms many client conversations because it names the place where time disappeared.