A $250 detention invoice should be boring. Routine. Easy to validate.

Instead, it turns into a 14-email thread, a screenshot of a driver’s ELD, a shipper insisting the appointment was missed, and a broker asking for “one more document” that no one can find. Multiply that by 40 loads a week and suddenly we’re not managing freight - we’re managing arguments.

Detention isn’t the root problem - bad information is

Detention fees, layover, TONU, redelivery, lumper, chassis split, reweigh, residential, limited access - the list keeps growing. But the pattern is consistent: accessorials spike when our operation can’t prove what happened, when it happened, and who owned the delay.

Here’s what’s usually broken:

• Timestamps don’t match across systems. The driver’s arrival time differs from the facility gate log, which differs from the TMS status update, which differs from what the customer service rep typed into the ERP.
• Appointments are treated like suggestions. A pickup “window” becomes a three-hour wait because the dock is short staffed or the yard is jammed.
• BOLs and PODs aren’t clean. Handwritten notes, missing signatures, blurry photos, or documents that live on someone’s desktop until the dispute window is already closed.
• Rate confirmations and carrier agreements are vague. Detention terms buried in fine print, inconsistent free time language, or no clarity on when the clock starts.
• Exceptions are handled ad hoc. One dispatcher fights every fee, another just approves them to clear the queue.

Why does it keep happening? Because accessorials live in the cracks between teams and systems. Operations knows what happened. Accounting sees the invoice. Customer service hears the complaint. The carrier has their own version of the truth. Nobody owns the full chain of evidence.

The industry is shifting, and accessorials are the tax we’re paying

Our industry has been warning about this for years: capacity loosens, rates swing, and everyone hunts for margin wherever they can.

Even in softer freight markets, carriers and 3PLs lean harder on accessorials to protect profitability. Facilities, on the other hand, are still fighting labor instability and throughput variability. When warehouses run hot, dwell time rises. When dwell time rises, detention follows.

A few trends we’re seeing across freight ops teams:

• Dispute cycles are getting longer. Many teams need 7-14 days to gather docs, and by then the leverage is gone.
• Documentation requirements are tightening. More shippers now require exact in and out times, signed detention forms, and appointment proofs before they’ll accept chargebacks.
• Accessorial line items are multiplying. What used to be “detention” becomes “detention plus driver assist plus yard move plus chassis wait,” especially in drayage and port-adjacent lanes.

The money adds up fast. If we’re paying just $75 in average accessorials on 20 percent of 500 monthly loads, that’s $7,500 a month, $90,000 a year. And that’s a conservative scenario. In busy networks, it’s not unusual to see 1-3 percent of freight spend leaking out through avoidable fees.

We can’t eliminate detention, but we can stop being surprised by it

The practical path forward isn’t “work harder” or “fight every invoice.” It’s building a repeatable detention and accessorial process that’s evidence-first and exception-driven.

Start with a single source of truth for event times

Pick the event timestamps your team will treat as authoritative for arrival, check-in, dock start, dock end, and departure. Then standardize where they come from.

• If you trust geofencing, define the geofence. Not “near the facility” - the gate.
• If you trust facility systems, make sure the gate and dock scans are captured consistently.
• If you trust driver check calls, stop relying on them as the primary record.

The goal is simple: when an invoice hits, we shouldn’t be reconstructing the day from memory.

Tighten the rules in the rate confirmation

Detention language can’t be a vague paragraph. It needs operational clarity:

• Free time and when the clock starts (appointment time vs arrival vs check-in)
• Required proof (signed in and out times, ELD, gate ticket)
• Billing increments (per hour, per 30 minutes, cap)
• Notification requirements (carrier must alert within X minutes of delay)

When it’s explicit, fewer invoices show up sloppy, and disputes get shorter.

Build an “accessorial triage” workflow

Not every invoice deserves a fight. But every invoice deserves a fast classification.

• Green: valid fee with complete proof - approve quickly
• Yellow: missing proof or conflicting timestamps - request docs within 24 hours
• Red: clearly invalid - dispute with a standard evidence packet

If we do this right, we cut the email tennis. We also get better data on which facilities and lanes are repeat offenders.

One tool note: teams using Debales.ai to pull evidence from scattered emails, POD images, and TMS notes can usually cut dispute prep time dramatically. It’s not magic, it just removes the scavenger hunt.

What we can do this week (without a big system project)

You don’t need a new TMS to get control. Here are moves we can implement in days, not quarters.

Pick your top 10 lanes or facilities and audit the last 30 days

Run a quick report and rank by total accessorial dollars, not count. You’ll usually find that 10 locations drive 60-80 percent of the pain.

For each, answer:

• What’s the average dwell time?
• What’s the most common fee type?
• Are appointments being hit?
• Are docs complete within 24 hours?

Standardize a detention packet template

Create a one-page checklist your team uses every time:

• Rate confirmation with detention terms highlighted
• Arrival and departure timestamps (source noted)
• Appointment confirmation
• Signed detention form or facility stamp (if required)
• Driver communication log (if relevant)

Make it a folder template in SharePoint, Google Drive, or your TMS document module. Consistency is what wins disputes.

Add a 15-minute “dwell review” to weekly ops calls

We already talk about tender acceptance and on-time performance. Add dwell.

Call out:

• Facilities with average dwell over 2 hours on live loads
• LTL terminals or cross-docks causing repeated reweigh or reclass charges
• Drayage moves with chassis wait patterns

Then assign one action per location: adjust appointment scheduling, change drop/live strategy, or escalate to shipper ops with evidence.

Make notification non-negotiable

A lot of detention becomes unavoidable because we learn about the delay too late.

Set a rule: if a driver has waited 60 minutes past the appointment (or check-in), the carrier must notify dispatch. If they don’t, the detention clock doesn’t start until notification. Put it in the rate confirmation and enforce it.

Clean up accessorial codes in your TMS

If everything gets dumped into “Other,” you’ll never see patterns.

Split at least these:

• Detention pickup vs detention delivery
• Layover
• TONU
• Lumper
• Redelivery
• Chassis wait (for drayage)

Better coding gives you leverage in QBRs and helps you fix root causes instead of playing whack-a-mole.

The real win is turning fees into feedback

Detention and accessorials are painful, but they’re also a signal. They tell us where our network doesn’t match reality: appointments that don’t reflect dock capacity, facilities that can’t handle live loads, shippers who push freight without owning the consequences.

If we treat every accessorial as “just the cost of doing business,” we keep paying for the same mistakes. If we treat it like operational telemetry, we start using it to redesign the plan.

The shift is simple: stop arguing about who’s right, and start building a system that can prove what happened. When the facts are fast, the fees get smaller.