What accessorial charges can you dispute on a freight invoice?
Last reviewed 2026-08-29
Accessorials are the extra fees carriers add on top of the base rate: detention, fuel surcharge, reweigh and reclass, liftgate, residential and limited-access, and address correction. Each is disputable when it was applied without meeting its condition, billed at the wrong rate, or duplicated. They are the single largest source of freight overcharges.
- Accessorials are the add-on fees, not the base line-haul rate.
- Detention, reweigh, and fuel surcharge are the most commonly miscbilled.
- Each is disputable when its condition was not met or its rate is wrong.
- Verify every accessorial against your contract and the shipment record.
Which accessorial charges are worth checking?
Detention and demurrage for time held, fuel surcharges tied to an index, reweigh and reclass adjustments, liftgate and inside delivery, residential or limited-access fees, and address corrections. Any one can be applied in error or at a rate above your agreement. Published tariff rates for these are a matter of record, so what a given accessorial should cost is checkable rather than negotiable.
When is an accessorial charge disputable?
When the triggering condition never happened (a residential fee on a commercial delivery), when the rate exceeds your contract (a fuel surcharge above the indexed percentage), when it duplicates another line, or when a reweigh does not match the actual weight and dimensions. The common thread is that every accessorial asserts a fact about what happened to the shipment, and a fact can be checked.
How do you check accessorials against the shipment?
Match each accessorial on the invoice to the contracted rate and the shipment record. A charge with no supporting event, or one above the agreed rate, is documented and disputed against the carrier's own data. Work from the bill of lading and the delivery record rather than memory: the BOL states whether the destination was residential, whether a liftgate was ordered, and what weight and class were tendered.
How do you dispute an accessorial charge?
File against the specific invoice and line, not the invoice as a whole, and state which of the three conditions failed: the event did not occur, the rate was wrong, or the line duplicates another. Attach the document that proves it, usually the bill of lading, the delivery receipt, or the tariff page showing the published rate. A dispute framed as a documented discrepancy against the carrier's own records is materially different from a request for goodwill, and is resolved differently.
Why do accessorial disputes get denied?
Most denials are procedural rather than substantive. The filing window closed while the invoice sat in an approval queue. The claim named the invoice but not the line, so it could not be matched. The supporting document was never attached, leaving the carrier's own record as the only evidence on file. Filing promptly, per line, with the document attached resolves most of what would otherwise be denied.
Sources and references
- The Good Index — LTL freight accessorial feesAccessorial fees for 10 major US LTL carriers — 371 rows extracted from each carrier's published rules tariff, every row citing the tariff document and item it came from. Verified Jul 21, 2026.
- How those rows are sourced and verifiedHow each accessorial row is pulled from a carrier's rules tariff and checked back against it.
Common questions
Which accessorial is overbilled most often?
Detention and reweigh, because both depend on carrier-recorded conditions that are easy to apply loosely, and fuel surcharges, which drift above the indexed rate.
Can I dispute a fuel surcharge?
Yes, when it exceeds the percentage tied to your contract's fuel index. Recomputing it against the index is what surfaces the overcharge.
Do these add up to real money?
Accessorial errors are a leading category within the 1% to 5% of transportation spend that freight audits typically recover (SupplyChainBrain, Transportation Insight).
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