Invoicing and collections
Delivering the load is the part you can control. Getting paid for it is the part that quietly decides whether the quarter worked.
The problem
Stated without hedging.
A load delivered on Friday and invoiced the following Wednesday is a load paid a week late, every time, for the life of your business. Invoicing lag is the cheapest problem in trucking to fix and one of the most commonly ignored.
Then there is what gets left on the table. Detention that was earned but never billed. A lumper receipt that went in a door pocket. A TONU nobody invoiced because it felt awkward. Carriers write off thousands of dollars a year in charges they were contractually owed, because chasing them is unpleasant and takes phone calls.
And there is the aging problem. Broker terms of thirty days become forty-five without anyone deciding they should. Nobody notices until cash is tight, and by then the invoice is old enough to be genuinely hard to collect.
What we do
Specific enough that you can hold us to it.
- Invoices go out the day you deliver
- With the signed bill of lading, the rate confirmation, and any accessorial documentation attached in the format the broker's system will actually accept without kicking it back.
- We chase aging invoices
- Anything past terms gets followed up, escalated, and followed up again. This is a phone call job and we make the calls so you do not make them at 5am from a bunk.
- We invoice the accessorials
- Detention, layover, tarp pay, lumper reimbursement, TONU. If it was on the rate confirmation, it gets billed. If a broker disputes it, we take that up with them.
- We work with your factoring company, not against it
- If you factor, we submit in the format your factor requires and make sure the notice of assignment is on file with the broker so nobody pays the wrong party.
What it costs when nobody does this
Unbilled accessorials and slow invoicing are the two most common sources of quiet loss in a small carrier's books, precisely because neither shows up as an obvious problem. Nothing is broken. The money just never arrives.
Related
Where this connects to the rest of the operation.
Dry van dispatch
Dry van is the deepest freight market in the country and the most crowded. The rate is rarely where a dry van week is won or lost — the accessorials are.
Reefer dispatch
Reefer pays better than dry van for a reason: more can go wrong, and when it does, the claim lands on you.
Rate negotiation
Brokers open low because opening low works. We negotiate against market data, in writing, on every load.
Paperwork and compliance
Rate confirmations read properly, documents filed where you can find them, and deadlines that do not arrive as a surprise.
What a carrier packet actually requires
The seven documents brokers ask for, why each one exists, and the specific mistakes that stall a new authority for a week.