The invoice always tells the truth

Freight looks profitable right up until the invoice lands.

We all know the pattern: the rate confirmation matches what was quoted, the lane ran close to plan, and then the carrier invoice shows $275 detention, $150 lumper, $95 re-delivery, and a storage line that no one can explain. Suddenly that solid margin is gone, and the post-mortem turns into finger-pointing between ops, the warehouse, the customer, and the carrier.

Detention and accessorial charges aren’t just annoying. They’re one of the most consistent ways our industry quietly gives away profit.

Why this keeps happening even when everyone tries

What’s broken isn’t that people don’t care. It’s that the process is designed to lose information at exactly the moments when it matters.

Most detention and accessorials come from the same root causes:

• Our appointments are set without real dock capacity data. A shipper might offer a 2-hour window, but the warehouse is effectively running a 5-hour backlog.
• The paperwork chain is fragile. BOLs, PODs, and lumper receipts live in texts, emails, and driver apps. When a dispute hits, we can’t produce proof fast.
• Terms are vague. Rate confirmations often say “detention after 2 hours” but don’t specify check-in method, start time, or whether “on-site” means gate, guard shack, or dock.
• Exceptions aren’t captured in the moment. The driver waited, but no one recorded when they arrived, when they were assigned a door, or when loading started.
• Accessorials are treated like one-offs. In reality, they’re patterns by facility, by customer, and by shift.

Here’s the uncomfortable observation: we’ve built teams that are great at moving freight, but we still run too much of the exception workflow on tribal knowledge and screenshots.

Industry context: the trend lines aren’t our friend

Detention and demurrage pressure hasn’t gone away. Even when linehaul rates soften, facilities stay constrained, labor stays variable, and appointment systems stay inconsistent.

A few data points worth keeping in mind:

• FMCSA’s detention time research has shown detention is widespread and often unpaid for drivers, which keeps carriers pushing harder to bill shippers and brokers when they can document delays.
• In parcel and LTL, accessorial revenue has become a bigger lever as base rates face competition. That mindset bleeds into truckload too: carriers are more disciplined about charging for what used to be “absorbed.”
• Across many networks, a 15 to 30 minute swing at live load facilities isn’t the exception, it’s normal. Multiply that across a week and you get missed appointments, re-deliveries, and cascading service failures.

The shift we’re seeing is simple: carriers are investing in better invoicing and audit processes. If we’re still chasing PODs three days later, we’re going to lose more disputes than we win.

A practical path forward that doesn’t require a system overhaul

We don’t need a 12-month transformation program to start winning back margin. We need tighter definitions, better timestamps, and faster exception capture.

Start by tightening the contract language we already use

If your rate confirmation says “2 hours free,” add the specifics:

• When detention starts (arrival at gate with guard check-in, or appointment time, or dock-in)
• What counts as proof (ELD timestamp, geofence, signed check-in sheet)
• Required documentation timeframe (for example, lumper receipts submitted within 24 hours)

This one change reduces ambiguity, which is what turns every dispute into a negotiation.

Treat detention like a measurable operational defect

The teams that reduce detention don’t argue about it. They track it.

At a minimum, we should be able to answer these every week:

• Top 10 facilities by detention hours
• Average dwell by facility, by day of week, by shift
• Percent of loads with accessorials by customer
• Dispute win rate and time to resolution

If you can’t see this in your TMS today, build a lightweight tracker. A shared sheet is better than nothing, but the key is consistency.

Capture exceptions at the moment they happen

The proof is always strongest in the first 30 minutes. After that, it turns into “he said, she said.”

What works in practice:

• Require drivers or carriers to submit check-in and dock-in timestamps through a standard channel, not scattered texts.
• Make lumper receipts mandatory before payment processing.
• Tie detention approval to a documented timeline: arrival, check-in, door assignment, start load, end load, out gate.

This is also where tools can help. If a colleague asked, I’d say Debales.ai is worth a look because it automates a lot of the document capture and exception visibility that typically clogs inboxes and slows disputes.

What we can do this week (and actually finish)

Here are moves that don’t require budget approval, and they usually show results within 7 to 14 days.

1) Build a “repeat offender” facility list

Pull the last 30 days of loads and tag any stop with:

• Detention billed
• Lumper billed
• Re-delivery billed
• Layover billed

Rank facilities by total accessorial dollars, not count. One facility with fewer incidents can still cost more.

Then do the simplest thing most teams skip: call the facility or the customer contact and share the data. “We ran 22 loads, averaged 3.1 hours dwell, paid $4,850 in detention” is harder to ignore than “we keep getting detention.”

2) Standardize appointment notes in the TMS

We’ve all seen appointment notes like “FCFS” or “2pm.” That’s how we lose money.

Update your internal SOP so every appointment record includes:

• Appointment type (live load, live unload, drop)
• Check-in method (guard, kiosk, call, app)
• Free time terms (2 hours from appointment time, or from check-in)
• After-hours rules and contact info

This takes minutes per load, but it prevents hours of dispute time later.

3) Put detention approval behind a timeline

Create a simple detention request form for carriers. If they can’t provide arrival, check-in, dock-in, and out times with supporting docs, it doesn’t get approved.

You’ll be surprised how quickly “detention everywhere” becomes “detention where it’s real.”

4) Pre-negotiate lumpers on problem lanes

If a customer’s DC uses lumpers consistently, bake it into the rate or set a cap with documentation requirements. Nothing kills trust faster than surprising the customer with a lumper pass-through after delivery.

5) Fix one warehouse constraint, not ten

If you run the facility, pick one bottleneck that causes real dwell. Examples that move the needle:

• Staging accuracy before the truck arrives
• Door assignment discipline (no idle doors while trucks wait)
• A dedicated “driver check-in” lane so arrivals get timestamped cleanly

Even a 20% reduction in average dwell at one high-volume site can translate into fewer re-deliveries, fewer layovers, and better carrier coverage.

The perspective shift that changes the math

Detention isn’t a fee problem. It’s a visibility and accountability problem.

When we treat accessorials as random noise, we keep paying them. When we treat them as operational defects with owners, timestamps, and patterns, they start to drop.

And here’s the challenge worth sitting with: if we can’t prove what happened at the dock, we don’t control our margin. The invoice does.