Drayage invoices are among the least audited documents in a shipper’s accounts payable stack. They arrive in volume, each one is individually small, and every line has a plausible-sounding name. So they get approved.
Yet drayage is a high-accessorial business where a single move can carry eight or nine separate charges, each with its own trigger conditions. Errors are common and they run in both directions — but the ones that favor the carrier are the ones you have to find yourself.
Here’s a practical audit process for a shipper who has never done one.
What you need before you start
- Your rate agreement, including the full accessorial schedule and the fuel surcharge mechanism. If your carrier agreement is just a base rate with no accessorial exhibit, the audit will tell you why that’s a problem.
- The shipment record — container number, terminal, availability date, last free day, appointment times, gate in/out timestamps, delivery POD.
- Three months of invoices for a representative lane. Auditing one invoice teaches you nothing; auditing a quarter shows you the pattern.
Line by line
Base linehaul
Confirm the lane matches the rate sheet, and that the container size billed matches the container that actually moved. Watch for a 40HC billed at a 45ft rate, or a delivery ZIP mapped to the wrong zone. Zone mapping errors repeat silently for months.
Fuel surcharge
This is the most commonly wrong line. Confirm the percentage against the index and the effective date, not against last month’s invoice. FSC is normally tied to a published diesel index for a region, with a base price and step increments — check that the index value used corresponds to the week the move happened. Our explainer on how drayage fuel surcharges work covers the mechanism.
Chassis charges
Two separate things get billed here and they’re easy to conflate: chassis usage (per diem, per day) and a chassis split (a separate trip to collect a chassis from a different location). Confirm the number of days billed against the actual gate-out and gate-in timestamps, and confirm a split fee is only present where a split actually happened. Our chassis guide explains both.
Pre-pull
A pre-pull should appear only when the container was pulled from the terminal and stored before delivery — and it should be paired with storage days, not with a same-day delivery. A pre-pull billed on a move that went terminal-to-consignee in one trip is an error. See what a pre-pull actually is.
Storage and yard days
Count the days between the yard in-gate and out-gate. Confirm whether the agreement bills calendar days or business days, and whether the first day is free. Off-by-one errors here are routine.
Driver wait and detention
The highest-value line to audit. Confirm the free time allowance in your agreement (commonly one to two hours), then check the billed wait against arrival and departure timestamps on the POD or the tracking record. If your carrier can’t produce timestamps, the charge isn’t supportable. Also confirm the wait wasn’t caused by the carrier arriving outside the appointment window.
Dry run and attempted delivery
Legitimate when the receiver refused or wasn’t ready. Not legitimate when the truck arrived without an appointment or outside the window. Ask what happened before approving.
Per diem and demurrage passed through
These originate with the ocean carrier or terminal, not the trucker, so they should be passed through at cost with the underlying invoice attached. Two checks: that the underlying invoice exists, and that the charge isn’t attributable to something the drayage carrier controlled — a missed appointment, a late pickup, a refused empty return. Those days are arguable against the carrier, and separately arguable against the biller under the FMC billing rules.
Overweight, hazmat, tri-axle, reefer
Confirm the condition actually applied. An overweight fee on a container under the threshold, or a tri-axle fee on a standard chassis move, happens more often than you’d expect when billing is partly manual.
Terminal, congestion and gate fees
These should be pass-through with documentation. A recurring flat “port fee” with no underlying charge behind it deserves a question.
The four error patterns to look for across a quarter
- Charges that appear on every invoice. Anything universal is either part of the base rate in disguise or an automatic add. Either way it should be negotiated into the linehaul where you can see it.
- Duplicate charges under different names. “Yard storage” and “container storage” on the same move. “Wait time” and “detention” on the same move.
- Rates that drift. Compare the same accessorial across three months. Unannounced increases show up here.
- Charges you’re absorbing that are somebody else’s. Per diem caused by a depot refusal, demurrage caused by a customs hold. Some of these are recoverable from the party responsible.
Building a dispute that gets paid
Vague complaints get slow-walked. Specific ones get credited.
- One email per invoice, not a spreadsheet of grievances across a quarter.
- Cite the container number, the invoice number, the specific line, the amount, and the clause or timestamp that contradicts it.
- Ask for the supporting document — the interchange receipt, the gate timestamp, the underlying per diem invoice. Roughly half of weak charges resolve at this step.
- State what you want: a credit, a corrected invoice, or a written explanation.
- Track outcomes. If the same error recurs after a credit, it’s a systems issue and belongs in a conversation with the carrier’s management, not with billing.
Prevention is mostly a contracting problem
Most disputable charges exist because the agreement was silent. The fixes are structural: a complete accessorial exhibit with every fee named and priced, a stated fuel surcharge mechanism rather than a percentage, a defined free time allowance for driver wait, and a requirement that pass-through charges arrive with the underlying documentation attached. Our guide to running a drayage RFP covers how to build that in at bid time, and the accessorial charges guide is a reference for what to ask about.
Tracking the outcomes as metrics — dry run rate, per diem incurred, average wait time — turns the audit from a one-off exercise into a control. Our drayage KPI post covers which ones matter.
If you’d like a rate structure where the accessorials are stated up front rather than discovered on the invoice, request a quote or talk to our team.
Frequently asked questions
How far back can I dispute a drayage invoice?
It depends on your carrier agreement, which typically sets a review window, and on general limitations periods that vary by jurisdiction and contract. Practically, disputes raised within 30 to 60 days get resolved; ones raised a year later rarely do. Check your agreement’s terms and raise issues promptly.
Which drayage charge is most often billed incorrectly?
Driver wait time and fuel surcharge, in most audits. Wait time because it depends on timestamps that aren’t always captured accurately, and fuel because the index and effective date are easy to apply incorrectly and rarely checked.
Should I audit every invoice or a sample?
Start with a full audit of one representative quarter to find the patterns, then move to sampling plus automated checks on the two or three lines where you found errors. Auditing everything forever is rarely worth the labor once the systemic issues are fixed.
