What do you need before you start measuring?
Before you log a single number, get three things in order.
First, confirm your gate system produces an event log you can export. You need a timestamp for every gate event: entry request, credential check result, and gate open or denied. If your system cannot export this, you are estimating, not measuring.
Second, define "after-hours" for your yard. Most operators use the window when no staff member is physically on site. Write that window down. It becomes the filter you apply to every log pull.
Third, decide who reviews the log. One person, weekly, is enough to start. The review does not need to be long. It needs to be consistent.
What are the three measures, their denominators, and how do you collect them?
Gate Throughput Time is a published yard KPI defined by C3 Solutions as total time for all trucks processed divided by the number of trucks processed, covering both check-in and check-out. For after-hours use, filter the log to your defined window and apply the same formula. The denominator is the count of gate events completed in that window. Collect it by exporting your gate system log and calculating the average in a spreadsheet.
Mismatch Rate is the share of after-hours gate events where the credential check fails and triggers remote-agent intervention. The denominator is total after-hours gate events, not total trucks on the yard. Collect it from the same log: count rows flagged as "mismatch" or "agent review required" and divide by total after-hours rows.
Modern systems make this count automatic. According to Outpost's gate automation product documentation, credential-sharing prevention is a discrete, configurable gate function that uses computer vision, facial recognition, and ID validation; a mismatch flags the event rather than exposing the underlying credential. Birdseye's GateCore product page confirms the system verifies driver identity, credentials, truck and trailer numbers, gate access authorization, Bills of Lading, and trailer seal status before entry or exit is approved, all without requiring the driver to share a password or PIN.
Detection-to-Intervention Time measures how fast a verified alert becomes a closed incident. Industry sources identify this as a critical operational metric for after-hours gate security, with operator-defined targets of mean time to acknowledge under 7 seconds and incident closeout under 5 minutes, shared weekly with stakeholders. The denominator is the count of verified alerts in the period. Collect it from your monitoring provider's alert log or your own incident log if you handle alerts in-house.
CISA's Risk-Based Performance Standards Guidance (RBPS 3: Screen and Control Access) specifies that facilities should control access by channeling vehicles to entry-control points and using electronic access control systems. That federal framework is a useful reference when you are deciding which of these three measures to prioritize for your yard.
What does your measurement worksheet look like?
One sheet, one row per week, six columns:
- Week ending date
- Total after-hours gate events
- Average Gate Throughput Time (minutes)
- Mismatch count
- Mismatch Rate (mismatch count divided by total after-hours gate events)
- Average Detection-to-Intervention Time (minutes)
Fill it from your gate log every Monday morning. After four weeks you have a baseline. After eight weeks you can see a trend.
Hypothetical example: what does the math look like?
Hypothetical example. A yard logs 30 after-hours gate events over a 30-night window. Six of those events result in a verification mismatch that requires remote-agent intervention. Mismatch Rate equals 6 divided by 30, which is 20 percent. The denominator is total after-hours gate events, not total trucks on the yard.
That gap is worth investigating before assuming the gate system is the bottleneck. It may be driver behavior, a carrier sending unfamiliar drivers, or a manifest mismatch that slows the automated check.
What are the common mistakes and edge cases?
The most common mistake is mixing after-hours events with daytime events in the denominator. Your daytime volume will swamp the after-hours signal and make the yard look safer than it is at 2am.
A second mistake is counting alarms rather than verified alerts. C3 Solutions lists Incident Rate as a core yard KPI defined as total incidents divided by total working hours, multiplied by 1,000,000. That formula is designed for safety incidents across all working hours. For after-hours gate security, you want verified alerts only: alarms that a remote agent or your system confirmed as a real event. Dismissed alarms belong in a separate column so you can track your false-positive rate, but they should not inflate your incident count.
Edge case: if a carrier sends a driver who is not on the dispatch manifest, your gate system may flag it as a mismatch even though the driver is legitimate. According to Northeast Remote Surveillance's truck yard security guidance, gate event audit questions should distinguish between unauthorized entry attempts and administrative errors such as missing paperwork. Keep a notes column on your worksheet for events that were resolved as administrative rather than security issues.
CISA's ISC Best Practices for Facility Access Control (2020 Edition) is a publicly available federal reference at cisa.gov that covers access control design principles you can use when deciding how to categorize events on your worksheet.
What should you do next?
- Export your gate system log for the past 30 nights and filter it to your defined after-hours window.
- Count total after-hours gate events, mismatch events, and verified alerts.
- Calculate Gate Throughput Time, Mismatch Rate, and average Detection-to-Intervention Time using the formulas above.
- Build the six-column worksheet and enter your first four weeks of data.
- Review the worksheet every Monday. If Mismatch Rate rises two weeks in a row, pull the flagged event records and check whether the pattern is a specific carrier, a specific time window, or a system configuration gap.
- Share the Detection-to-Intervention Time column with your monitoring provider weekly so they can confirm their response targets match your operational needs.