Detention and Accessorial Charges: Getting Paid for Lost Time

A load's rate confirmation shows a linehaul number, and most carriers treat that as the whole paycheck. It isn't. Every hour you sit at a dock, every night a load strands you, every time a shipper cancels after you've arrived — that's billable. Those are accessorial charges, and the difference between carriers who collect them and carriers who don't is thousands of dollars a year.

What accessorials are

Accessorials are charges beyond the linehaul — payment for work, time, or services outside simply driving the freight from A to B. They're standard in freight, but they're not automatic: you generally get them only if they're agreed up front and documented. Ask afterward with no paper trail and the answer is usually no.

Detention — the big one

Detention is pay for being held at a shipper or receiver beyond a reasonable loading/unloading window. The customary free window is about 2 hours; after that, detention typically runs $25–$100 per hour depending on the lane, customer, and equipment (reefer and specialized often command more).

This isn't a minor line item. Federal reviews — including a U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General study — have found driver detention costs the industry on the order of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, and correlates with real safety risk, because time burned at a dock is time pulled off a driver's hours-of-service clock. Detention is both a revenue problem and a safety problem, which is exactly why documenting it matters.

Common accessorial charges

• Detention — held beyond the free window (above).
• Layover — held overnight (or a full day+) because a facility can't load/unload you in time.
• TONU (Truck Order Not Used) — you're dispatched and arrive, but the load is canceled. A flat fee compensates you for the wasted trip and capacity.
• Lumper fee — payment to a third-party crew to load/unload (common in grocery). Get it reimbursed, with the receipt.
• Driver assist / unload — you're required to help handle freight.
• Stop-off — extra pickup or delivery stops beyond the first.
• Redelivery / reconsignment — you're sent back, or rerouted to a new destination.
• Tarp, hazmat, team, after-hours, and storage — situational premiums for extra work or requirements.

How to document it

Accessorials are won or lost on documentation. For every load where time or extra work is at stake, capture:

• Arrival and departure times — in and out. Your ELD and telematics timestamp this automatically; use it.
• Signed check-in / check-out or a gate/dock record showing when you arrived and were released.
• Photos and notes — dock status, seal, BOL notations, anything that shows the delay wasn't yours.
• The rate con terms — so the charge you're billing matches what was agreed.

How to actually collect

1. Get it on the rate con up front. This is 80% of the battle.
2. Log times in real time. Reconstructed times after the fact are easy for a broker to reject.
3. Submit accessorials with the invoice — same packet as the BOL/POD, with the supporting timestamps and receipts attached.
4. Escalate professionally. If a valid, documented charge is denied, follow up with the paper trail. Track which brokers routinely pay accessorials and which fight them — that's useful when deciding whose freight to take.

How Ashton helps

This is squarely dispatch and back-office work, and it's easy to let slide when you're driving. Ashton's dispatch team negotiates accessorial terms onto the rate confirmation before you accept a load, and our billing and back-office team documents detention and files the charges with your invoice so the money actually shows up — then follows up when a broker drags. You keep your authority and approve every load; we make sure the hours you spend sitting don't go unpaid.