Truck drivers wait an average of 2.5 hours at warehouses unpaid - here are the 10 cities where truckers wait the longest

David Zalubowski/AP

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

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.

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"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. On average in 2018, truckers waited at shipping docks for 2.5 hours per job, according to FreightWaves SONAR data from its 135 markets. That average wait was as high as 5.5 hours in Fresno, California.

According to a survey, administered by the freight marketplace DAT Solutions, of 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 10 worst detention times, according to FreightWaves: