Are You Tracking Every Surcharge on Your Shipments?

For many companies, the line items in a carrier invoice can feel like alphabet soup — acronyms and terms that sound technical but translate to extra cost. These charges, often called accessorial fees or surcharges, can quietly inflate your shipping costs if they aren’t monitored.

Common examples include:

• Fuel Surcharge – A percentage-based fee tied to carrier indexes, but not always moving in sync with fuel prices.
• Delivery Area Surcharge (DAS) – Additional cost for certain zip codes, even if they’re not truly “remote.”
• Residential Surcharge – Triggered by delivery type, sometimes even for commercial addresses misclassified.
• Address Correction Fee – Charged for any adjustment, even minor typos.
• Additional Handling – Applied to oddly shaped packages or those exceeding size thresholds.

These aren’t “one-off” exceptions — for some shippers, they represent 20–40% of total spend. And because they’re embedded in invoice detail lines, they’re easy to miss in weekly cost reviews.

Why this matters:

• Budget creep – You may budget for base shipping costs, but surcharges can push you well beyond projections.
• Missed disputes – Some surcharges might be disputable if caught quickly.
• Hidden patterns – Repeated DAS charges to the same customer? That’s an opportunity to re-route or renegotiate.

How to stay in control:

1. Break down your charges by type each week — don’t just look at totals.
2. Identify the biggest repeat offenders in your surcharge list.
3. Set alerts for sudden changes in surcharge percentages or frequency.
4. Document and trend these over time so you can take targeted action.

Accessorials and surcharges aren’t going away — but knowing exactly how they hit your spend gives you the power to reduce them. Whether you handle this in-house or through a partner, the key is simple: don’t let these charges blend into the background.

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