It’s 4:47 pm and you’re trying to close out the week. Then AP pings you: three invoices don’t match the rate confirmations, and the carrier’s notes say “detention approved.” You pull the POD, skim the email thread, and realize nobody can find the actual in and out times. The shipper swears the driver was late. The driver swears the dock was backed up. Meanwhile the accessorial line item is real money, and it’s coming out of someone’s budget.

If you run freight long enough, you learn this pattern isn’t random. Accessorial charges are the tax we pay for process gaps, messy data, and misaligned expectations across shippers, receivers, brokers, carriers, and warehouses. And because they’re usually small compared to the linehaul, they sneak in until they don’t. One month you’re fine. Next month you’re explaining why detention and “other” charges are up 18%.

The part we keep pretending is a one-off

Here’s what’s actually broken: we treat accessorials like exceptions when they’re really signals. Detention, layover, re-delivery, TONU, lumper, reclass, limited access, oversize, chassis split, driver assist, inside delivery. These aren’t rare edge cases anymore. They show up when the freight plan and the execution reality don’t match.

A few common root causes show up again and again:

• Bad appointment discipline: The pickup is “FCFS” in the TMS, but the receiver enforces a tight appointment window. The driver shows up early, gets turned away, and comes back later. Now we have detention risk and a service failure risk.
• Missing operational timestamps: If we don’t have reliable arrived, checked-in, door-assigned, loaded/unloaded, and departed times, we can’t dispute anything. And if you can’t dispute it, you end up paying it.
• Rate confirmation drift: The quote says 2 hours free time, the carrier tariff says 1 hour, the customer contract says 3 hours, and the dock team has never heard of any of it.
• Facility reality vs. routing guide: The routing guide assumes drop-and-hook. The facility is live load only. Or the routing guide says “no lumper,” but the receiver uses a third-party lumping service and won’t touch freight without a receipt.
• Classification and packaging slippage: LTL reclass happens when the NMFC class on the BOL doesn’t match the actual density, packaging, or handling characteristics. One wrong class can swing an invoice by hundreds of dollars.

The reason it keeps happening is simple: accessorials live in the cracks between systems. Your TMS knows the tender and the rate. Your WMS knows the dock workload. Your ERP knows what you got billed. Your carrier portal has tracking breadcrumbs. The truth sits across all of them, and nobody has time to stitch it together during a busy day.

The industry is shifting, and accessorials are riding the wave

Our industry is getting more volatile, not less. Even when linehaul rates soften, the “extras” stay stubborn because they’re tied to operational friction.

A few trends are making it worse:

• Tighter networks and less slack at the dock: Warehouses are running leaner labor plans. When inbound surges, detention climbs. It only takes a few late trucks to cascade into a bad day.
• More complex fulfillment: Omni-channel and smaller, more frequent orders increase touches. More touches means more chances for appointment misses, rework, and re-deliveries.
• Carrier enforcement is up: Carriers have gotten more disciplined about billing accessorials because it’s one of the few levers they control when margins are tight.
• Visibility expectations are higher: Customers want real-time ETA, tight OTIF performance, and fewer surprises. If we can’t see issues early, we pay for them later.

And the numbers matter. In many networks, it’s not unusual for accessorials to land in the 2% to 8% of total freight spend range. If you run $20M a year in transportation, that’s $400K to $1.6M. Even a modest 15% reduction is meaningful budget relief.

You don’t need perfection, you need repeatable control

The path forward isn’t “tell everyone to do better.” It’s building a system where accessorials are predictable, provable, and preventable.

Start with three practical moves:

1) Standardize what “proof” looks like

Detention disputes die when we don’t have timestamps. Decide what counts as valid evidence across your network. For example:

• Gate in and gate out times from a yard system
• ELD geofence arrive and depart times
• Facility check-in logs
• Signed dock ticket with time stamps

Then put it in writing. If a carrier wants detention, require the same proof every time. Not because we’re trying to be difficult, but because consistency reduces noise and speeds resolution.

2) Make accessorials part of routing, not an afterthought

If a location is a detention factory, treat it like a constraint. Build it into your lane strategy:

• Adjust lead times and appointment buffers
• Use carriers that know the facility and have the right equipment
• Consider drop trailer where it actually reduces dwell
• Price it correctly up front instead of arguing later

This is also where a tool like Debales.ai can help as a practical layer across TMS and invoice data, flagging patterns like repeat detention at a single DC or accessorial creep on a specific lane, so we’re not discovering it weeks later in an AP queue.

3) Close the loop with the dock and customer teams

Accessorials are a cross-functional problem. If the warehouse team doesn’t see the cost impact, nothing changes. Share a simple monthly scorecard by facility:

• Detention hours billed vs. approved
• Top 10 accessorial reasons
• Average dwell time by day of week and shift
• Cost per load by facility

When a DC sees that Tuesday second shift is generating 40% of detention charges, you can actually fix something.

What we can do this week without a big project

If you want fast wins, here are moves you can execute in the next 5 days.

Tighten detention rules on new tenders

Update your rate confirmation template:

• Free time policy (pickup and delivery)
• Required proof format
• Billing window (example: invoice within 30 days)
• Pre-approval requirements for layover or TONU

This one change reduces “surprise” invoices and speeds disputes.

Run an accessorial Pareto

Pull the last 60 to 90 days of invoices and group accessorials by:

• Facility
• Carrier
• Lane
• Reason code

You’re looking for the 20% that drives 80% of the pain. In most operations, it’s a handful of locations and a handful of charge types.

Fix one facility at a time

Pick the worst offender and do a quick root-cause session:

• What’s the appointment policy vs. reality?
• Are drivers checking in correctly?
• Are we staging freight on time?
• Do we have enough doors, labor, or yard capacity during peaks?

Then implement one change you can measure: earlier staging cut-off, additional dock labor during inbound surge windows, or strict appointment enforcement.

Pre-audit invoices before they hit AP

Set up a simple rule-based check:

• If detention is billed, does proof exist?
• If lumper is billed, is a receipt attached?
• If LTL reclass occurs, did we validate NMFC and dimensions?

Even a lightweight pre-audit can cut preventable accessorial payments by 10% to 25%, especially in messy networks.

Teach dispatch and customer service the same script

When a delay happens, we need the same response every time:

• Capture arrive time, check-in time, door time
• Notify the customer within 30 minutes of delay risk
• Ask for appointment flexibility before the problem turns into detention

Consistency beats heroics.

The mindset shift that actually changes the numbers

Accessorials aren’t just annoying fees. They’re operational telemetry. If we treat them like noise, we’ll keep paying them. If we treat them like data, they’ll show us exactly where our network is brittle.

The teams that get ahead don’t argue harder with carriers. They build cleaner proof, tighter expectations, and faster feedback loops. And once you do that, the best part happens: your freight budget stops being a mystery, and you can finally spend your time improving the network instead of explaining it.