Freight budgets don’t usually blow up in one dramatic incident. They bleed.

A few extra hours of detention here. A reweigh charge there. An LTL reclass that quietly doubles a line item. Then someone asks why transportation cost per order is up 6% when volumes are flat and service levels are supposedly better than last quarter.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because our industry has a cost drift problem. And it keeps happening for the same reasons: we run complex networks on messy data, we move fast, and we often treat freight audit like an accounting task instead of an operations control.

The leaks are small, but they’re everywhere

Most cost drift comes from the gap between what we planned and what actually happened.

We tender based on assumptions: correct NMFC class, accurate weights and dims, realistic pickup windows, proper appointment requirements, clean accessorial expectations, and a carrier that follows the rate confirmation. Then reality shows up.

Here’s what breaks most often:

• Detention and layover become routine, not exceptional. Facilities run behind, appointments slip, drivers wait, and the invoice shows 2-6 hours of detention. Multiply that by even 10 loads a week and you’re staring at thousands a month.
• Accessorial charges get added without a clean reason code. Liftgate, residential, limited access, inside delivery, redelivery, dry run, TONU. Sometimes valid. Often preventable. Almost always inconsistent.
• LTL classification and dims are wrong upstream. A WMS prints a label, but the ERP item master has outdated packaging. One new carton size rolls out and nobody updates the dims table. The carrier audits, reclasses, and the bill jumps 30% to 120%.
• Drayage and port work get billed in a different language. Per diem, demurrage, chassis splits, dual transactions. The data trail is fragmented across emails, PDFs, and terminal portals.
• We have three versions of the truth. The BOL says one thing, the TMS tender says another, the carrier invoice says a third. Freight audit teams end up guessing.

The frustrating part is that none of this feels like a single fix. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts.

Why it keeps happening even with a TMS in place

Most of us already have systems: TMS, WMS, ERP, appointment tools, carrier portals. So why are we still chasing spend?

Because systems don’t enforce discipline by themselves. They automate whatever process we feed them.

A few patterns show up repeatedly:

• Weak master data governance. Item weights, dims, NMFC classes, accessorial rules, ship-from and ship-to profiles. If they’re wrong, every downstream cost decision is wrong.
• Tendering is optimized, execution is not. We’re great at shopping rates and building routing guides. We’re less consistent at preventing detention, validating charges, and closing loops with facilities.
• Freight audit is too late. By the time we find issues 30 days after delivery, the dock supervisor has moved on and the carrier rep has the invoice aged out.
• No single owner for chargebacks and root cause. Detention gets logged as a transportation problem when it’s often a warehouse throughput or appointment adherence problem.

Cost drift is basically process debt. It accumulates interest every week.

Industry context: volatility is down, complexity is up

The market has cooled compared to the peak years, but operational complexity hasn’t.

• Shippers and 3PLs are running leaner teams, which means less time to dispute invoices, correct item masters, and coach facilities.
• Carriers are tightening billing discipline. More automated invoice auditing on their side means more automated reweighs, reclasses, and accessorial triggers.
• Service expectations haven’t relaxed. Customers still want tighter delivery windows, more updates, and fewer exceptions.

Meanwhile, the dollars are real. Detention alone is commonly billed at roughly $75 to $150 per hour depending on mode and market. It doesn’t take many repeated delays to create a 3% to 8% drag on transportation spend for a busy network.

LTL is another silent amplifier. One consistent pattern we see: a small percentage of shipments drive a big percentage of LTL surprises. If 5% of LTL moves get reweighed or reclassed and those invoices increase by 50% on average, you can end up with a meaningful budget miss without any change in volume.

The trend line is clear: more charges are being generated automatically, and fewer teams have time to manually validate them.

A practical path forward: treat freight cost like a control system

The way out isn’t more spreadsheets. It’s building a tight feedback loop between execution and billing.

Here’s a playbook that works in real operations.

Start where the money actually moves

If you want results quickly, don’t boil the ocean. Focus on the charge categories that create repeatable drift.

1) Detention, layover, and reschedules

• Identify your top 10 detention locations by dollars and frequency.
• Tie each event to appointment compliance and dwell time, not just the invoice.
• Set a threshold: for example, any detention over 2 hours triggers a same-week review.

2) LTL reweigh and reclass

• Pull the SKUs most associated with reclass events.
• Validate item master weights and dims against actual packaged product.
• Lock down carton changes: no new packaging goes live without a master data update.

3) High-frequency accessorials

• Map accessorials to shipper or consignee profiles. If a location always requires liftgate or limited access, build it into rating and quoting instead of acting surprised later.

Make disputes operational, not emotional

Disputes get toxic when they’re based on opinions. They get resolved when they’re based on artifacts.

Build a simple evidence pack for your top charge types:

• Detention: appointment time, check-in, check-out, yard logs, ELD timestamps if available
• LTL: BOL, dims/weight capture at dock, photos of pallet and label
• Accessorials: consignee profile, delivery notes, POD comments

If you can assemble this in 10 minutes per disputed invoice, your win rate goes up and your cycle time drops.

This is also where a tool can help. Debales.ai is worth a look if we want to automate invoice validation and exception detection across messy documents like BOLs, rate confirmations, and carrier invoices, without burning analyst hours.

What to do this week (no big system projects)

We can tighten the screws fast with a few targeted moves.

1) Publish a one-page accessorial policy

Pick the 8 to 12 accessorials that hit you most. Define:

• When it’s valid
• What proof is required
• Who approves it
• How it gets coded in the TMS

Then share it with carriers and your internal customer service team. You’d be surprised how many charges disappear when expectations are explicit.

2) Audit 50 invoices, not all invoices

Select a focused sample:

• 20 LTL invoices
• 20 FTL invoices with detention risk
• 10 drayage invoices if you touch ports

Track only three fields: planned cost, billed cost, and the reason for delta. After 50, patterns will be obvious.

3) Fix the top 5 item masters driving reclasses

Don’t debate it. Measure it.

• Pull the SKU list tied to reclass events
• Re-measure packaged weight and dims
• Update ERP and WMS

If we remove even 10 repeat reclass events a month and each is a $150 swing, that’s $18,000 a year on a tiny slice of volume.

4) Add a dock-side dwell timer

If your facilities don’t measure dwell time, start simple.

• Track check-in and check-out timestamps
• Review weekly with warehouse leadership
• Set a target, like 90% of loads out in under 90 minutes for live loads

Detention isn’t just a carrier issue. It’s a throughput KPI.

5) Hold a 30-minute weekly cost exceptions standup

Invite transportation, warehouse, and customer service.

• Review top 10 cost deltas
• Assign one root cause owner per issue
• Close the loop with a correction: master data, appointment rules, routing guide, or carrier feedback

This is where drift stops. Not in a quarterly deck.

The shift that changes everything

We often talk about freight costs like they’re market-driven and out of our control. Rates are market-driven. Execution charges are usually self-inflicted.

When we treat accessorials, reclasses, and detention as random noise, we keep paying for them. When we treat them like process signals, they become a roadmap to better operations.

The challenge for us this quarter is simple: stop accepting cost drift as normal, and start managing it like the controllable system it is.