We all know the feeling: you win a lane at a rate you can defend, execute the move, and then the invoice shows up heavier than the load ever was. Detention. Lumper. Residential. Reclass. Redelivery. Suddenly that "fine" margin turns into a post-mortem.

Accessorials are not new. What’s new is how consistently they show up and how hard they are to dispute once they do.

Accessorials are the tax on messy execution

The broken part isn’t that accessorials exist. The broken part is that we keep treating them like exceptions instead of a predictable outcome of small operational gaps.

Here’s what keeps happening in the real world:

• Appointment details live in emails, not in the TMS. The carrier arrives with the wrong reference number or misses the check-in window by 20 minutes and gets pushed to the back of the line.
• Our BOL doesn’t match what the dock actually loads. The freight class gets adjusted, or the pallet count changes, and the carrier bills a reclass after delivery.
• The shipper says "no touch" but the consignee requires driver assist and a lumper. Nobody confirms it until the driver is standing there.
• We quote an LTL move using commodity assumptions that were true last quarter, then density shifts and the NMFC classification bites us.
• Drayage gets booked without a clean cut time and free time plan. The box sits, per diem starts, and the invoice arrives like a freight horror story.

The reason it keeps happening is simple: accessorials sit in the gaps between systems and people.

Our ERP knows the customer. Our WMS knows what shipped. Our TMS knows the load tender. The dock knows what actually happened. The carrier knows what they’ll charge for. Most companies still don’t have a reliable way to line those up in one place fast enough to prevent the fee, or to fight it with proof.

The market has made carriers less flexible

A few years ago, some carriers would waive small stuff to keep the relationship smooth. That’s fading. Costs are up, networks are tight, and carriers are enforcing tariffs and accessorial schedules more aggressively.

A couple of shifts are driving the spike:

• Detention enforcement has gotten sharper. ELDs made dwell time undeniable. If the carrier can show arrival and departure, the clock is hard to argue with.
• Warehouses are running leaner. Fewer dock workers and higher throughput targets mean more delays. When a facility is short staffed, the driver waits. Someone pays.
• LTL reweigh and reclass programs are more automated. Many carriers scan dimensions, weights, and density at terminals. Misdeclared freight gets caught more often than it used to.
• Retail and e-commerce delivery requirements are stricter. Liftgate, inside delivery, appointment windows, limited access, all normal now. But they’re still missed in quoting.

Industry-wide, detention and accessorial charges can easily swing 2 percent to 8 percent of total transportation spend depending on network complexity. In high-touch last mile or multi-stop retail, it can be higher. That’s not a rounding error. That’s the difference between a quarter the CFO hates and one they don’t ask questions about.

The practical path forward is boring, and it works

Accessorial control isn’t about arguing harder. It’s about removing ambiguity before the truck moves, then capturing evidence when reality doesn’t match the plan.

A workable approach looks like this:

Start by turning accessorials into planned events

If your team only tracks accessorials after invoicing, you’re already late. We need them in the load build and tender workflow.

• Add accessorial checkboxes tied to customer and location profiles in the TMS: lumper likely, appointment required, driver assist, liftgate, limited access, hazmat, pallet exchange.
• Create a minimum required field set before tendering: pickup number, delivery reference, appointment time, detention policy, who pays lumper.
• Standardize rate confirmations to call out what’s included and what triggers extra charges.

This isn’t glamorous. It’s discipline.

Fix the two documents everyone argues about

Most accessorial disputes come down to: what did we say would happen, and what actually happened?

• BOL accuracy: enforce a final check at shipping. Pallet count, weight, commodity description, NMFC class for LTL. If it’s wrong, reclass is almost guaranteed.
• Proof of timestamps: capture arrival, check-in, dock time, and departure. If your facilities won’t sign paper, use gate logs, yard management timestamps, or driver app check-in.

When you can prove dwell time and responsibility, disputes get resolved faster. When you can’t, you pay.

Separate what’s preventable from what’s billable

Some accessorials are preventable. Some are the cost of doing business with a location.

• Preventable: missed appointments, wrong reference numbers, incomplete instructions, incorrect class/weight, missing liftgate requirement.
• Billable by design: lumper at a facility that always uses lumpers, detention when the facility routinely runs 4 hours late, redelivery because consignees refuse after-hours.

If a facility is consistently generating fees, bake it into pricing, lane guides, and customer conversations. We can’t keep subsidizing bad docks.

If you want a faster way to spot patterns across invoices, PODs, and carrier billing, tools like Debales.ai can help teams flag repeat offenders and pinpoint root causes without living in spreadsheets.

What we can do this week that actually moves the needle

Here are practical steps you can knock out in five business days, even if you’re juggling tenders and firefighting.

Run an accessorial spend triage

Pull the last 60 to 90 days of freight bills and group by:

• Accessorial type (detention, lumper, reclass, redelivery, layover)
• Facility (shipper and consignee)
• Carrier
• Customer or business unit

You’re looking for the 80 20. Usually 5 locations cause most of the pain.

Build a "facility playbook" for the worst three sites

For each location, write one page your team can follow:

• Appointment rules and lead time
• Check-in process and required references
• Common accessorials and who pays
• Photos or notes on where drivers park and how to avoid being turned away
• Escalation contact at the facility

Then attach it to the customer profile in your TMS or share it in your SOP channel.

Add a detention clock to dispatch

If dispatch doesn’t track dwell until the invoice arrives, it will keep happening.

• Have drivers check in via app or text at arrival.
• Set a 90-minute alert to ops when a truck is still waiting.
• Call the facility before the free time expires. Not after.

That one change alone can cut detention frequency materially because it forces real-time escalation.

Tighten LTL classification at the source

If you ship LTL, do this immediately:

• Require weight and dims capture for the top 20 SKUs by volume.
• Audit commodity descriptions for vague terms like "parts" or "materials".
• Align WMS item master with NMFC mapping so the BOL prints correctly.

Reclass fees are painful because they feel random. They’re not. They’re often bad inputs.

Put accessorial language in the customer conversation

This is the hard part, but it saves margin.

When a customer location causes chronic detention, show the data: average dwell, frequency, total cost. Then propose either:

• A detention policy pass-through after X hours
• A rate adjustment for that facility
• Appointment changes or drop trailer programs

Most customers will respond to evidence. They won’t respond to complaints.

The mindset shift: accessorials are operational feedback

Our industry loves to treat accessorials like unfair penalties. Sometimes they are. More often, they’re expensive feedback about where our process and our partners are misaligned.

If we track them like a KPI, design them into pricing when they’re unavoidable, and attack the preventable ones at the source, they stop being surprises. And when accessorials stop being surprises, margin stops being a mystery.