What are the responsibilities of a yard manager?
Everything between the gate and the dock door, and the record that proves it.
Reviewed October 2026
Short answer: a warehouse yard manager owns everything between the gate and the dock door. That means an accurate record of every truck in and out, knowing where each trailer is and whether it's loaded or empty, keeping doors supplied, keeping dwell and detention down, controlling seals, and keeping the yard safe for drivers, jockeys and dock crews. In small warehouses the same person often runs the dock too.
The six things a yard manager owns
| Responsibility | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|
| 1. The gate record | Every truck gets a record at the gate: time in, carrier, trailer number, seal, driver, spot. Time out goes on the same record. The gate check-in guide lists the fields. |
| 2. Yard inventory | Knowing which trailers are on site, where, loaded or empty, and whose. That's checked against a physical walk, not trusted from memory. See the yard check sheet. |
| 3. Dock door flow | Deciding which trailer goes to which door and when, and keeping a trailer ready when a door opens. That's the handoff between the yard and the dock supervisor. See the dock door board. |
| 4. Dwell and detention | Watching how long trucks and trailers stay, and which stops are running past contract free time. A driver's wait at the facility counts as on-duty time (49 CFR 395.2). In an FMCSA-sponsored study, stops with detention ran an average of 1.4 hours past a two-hour window (84 FR 26933). |
| 5. Seals | Where seals are part of the program: seals logged on receipt and on use, checked against the paperwork, and audited. CBP's CTPAT seal guidance says dock supervisors or warehouse managers "must periodically verify seal numbers" (CBP job aid, Oct 2021). |
| 6. Safety | Traffic rules in the yard, and the handoff at the door: brakes set and wheels chocked before a forklift boards a trailer (OSHA 1910.178(k)(1)), and fixed jacks where an uncoupled trailer needs them ((m)(7)). |
Daily and weekly checklist
Every day
- Every truck on site has a gate-in record, and every truck that left has a time out.
- A yard check ran this shift, and any mismatches were fixed in the log the same hour.
- The five trailers on site longest are known, with a reason and an owner for each.
- Loads close to the end of contract free time are flagged before they cross it.
- Seal mismatches and damage notes from the gate were followed up.
Every week
- Trucks per day, average time on site, and the share of stops past free time, compared with last week.
- Empties returned or scheduled for pickup, so the yard doesn't fill with trailers nobody needs.
- Detention invoices received, checked against your own gate times.
- Where seals are in the program, a count of seals on hand against the seal log.
The numbers, and where they come from
Every number a yard manager is asked for comes from the gate record: arrivals, time on site, stops past free time, trailers on site and how old they are. If the gate record is typed up at the end of the shift, all of those numbers are guesses. The U.S. DOT Inspector General found that reliable industry-wide detention data doesn't exist (DOT OIG ST2018019), so for your own yard, the record you keep is the only one there is.
FAQ
What is the difference between a yard manager and a dock supervisor?
The dock supervisor runs the work at the doors: crews, loading, unloading. The yard manager runs what feeds the doors: the gate, the parked trailers, the yard moves, and the time trucks spend on site. In small warehouses one person often does both.
What numbers should a yard manager track?
Trucks in and out per day, time on site from gate in to gate out, how many stops went past contract free time, trailers on site and their age, and exceptions found by yard checks. All of them come from the gate record.
Start with the gate record.
With Vantage, the guard logs gate in and out on a phone, with a timestamp on every record and a photo whenever the camera is used, so the yard manager's numbers come from records instead of memory. The Free plan is $0 for 3 users, 1 yard and 100 gate transactions a month. No card.
Related: stop losing trailers in the yard · reduce detention charges · digital gate log app