The Shipper's Manifest reported this morning on September's freight price jump, and its advice in Freight Prices Jumped in September. Check Invoices Before They Post. comes down to timing: a freight invoice that posts unchecked becomes the freight figure on the books, and wherever accounting treats freight as part of inventory cost, that figure flows into it. Here is what that looks like on one dock.
The operation in this walkthrough is illustrative, built to reflect a typical small or mid-sized manufacturer, distributor or warehouse: Kestrel Lane Packing Co., a 68-person contract packager with a 48,000 square foot building and about 55 inbound purchase orders a month. Its vendor, Oakvale Corrugated Supply, is invented too. The workflow and the arithmetic are real. The companies are not.
The line
Kestrel routes its own inbound freight on its own LTL account. For this order it priced the lane before the vendor shipped: 1,800 corrugated cartons from Oakvale at $4.10 each, a purchase order of $7,380. The quote and the pickup booking were made on the same screen, so the quote exists as a record.
The pallets arrive complete and undamaged. The receiver counts them, signs the delivery receipt with no exception (correct, because nothing was short or damaged), records 1,800 received against the purchase order line, and puts the cartons away to a bin such as B1-A03-SA-R02-L01-P02-BN01.
Days later the carrier's invoice arrives. The total looks ordinary, so accounts payable pays it on the usual cycle. Nobody lays it next to the quote.
Quote against invoice
The quote was linehaul plus a fuel surcharge stated as a percentage of linehaul, with no accessorials:
- Quoted: linehaul $520.00, fuel 28 percent of $520.00 = $145.60, total $665.60
- Billed: linehaul $520.00, fuel 31 percent of $520.00 = $161.20, liftgate at delivery $110.00, total $791.20
The difference by charge type:
- Fuel: $161.20 minus $145.60 = $15.60
- Liftgate: $110.00
- Total difference: $15.60 plus $110.00 = $125.60
That is about 16 percent of the billed freight, and under 2 percent of the $7,380 order.
Two lines, two different answers
A liftgate is charged when the delivery site has no dock or no equipment to unload. Kestrel unloads at dock-height doors with its own forklift, and the invoice cites no driver notation supporting the charge. That line can be settled from the documents alone: the quote did not include it and nothing on the invoice justifies it.
The fuel line is different. Carrier fuel tables step weekly against the published diesel index, so a billed percentage above the quoted one can be perfectly legitimate if the shipment moved in a later table week. That line stays open until the carrier cites the table and the week it applied. Treating it as a recovery would be a guess.
Neither the delivery receipt nor the purchase order decides this. The receipt is the carrier's document and governs a loss or damage claim. The purchase order is the contract with Oakvale and governs a vendor chargeback. This is a billing dispute on freight charges, and it rests on the quote and the invoice.
Where the money goes next
Divide by the 1,800 cartons received. This is your own arithmetic on paper, and LanePilot does not do it: it does not calculate inventory valuation, cost of goods or landed cost, which stay in your accounting system.
- At the quoted freight: $665.60 divided by 1,800 = about $0.37 a carton
- At the paid freight: $791.20 divided by 1,800 = about $0.44 a carton
Seven cents a carton, on every carton in the order, and wherever your accounting treats freight as part of inventory cost, that is where it lands.
The fix
LanePilot is one system, a TMS and WMS for small and mid-sized manufacturers, distributors and warehouses, and this sequence runs inside it. The quote and booking live in the same place as the receiving record, so the receipt against the purchase order line and the original quote are both already on file when the invoice arrives. The invoice audit compares the two and itemizes the difference by charge type, which is the list above, and it drafts a dispute letter for the liftgate line.
You review it and you file it. LanePilot prepares the paperwork; it does not contact your carrier or your vendor on your behalf. The fuel line goes on the letter as an open question for the carrier to answer with its table and week.
Catching this before payment is the cheaper moment, because the money has not left yet.
Run this on your own dock
One. Pull three recent freight invoices and find the quote for each. If you cannot find the quote, you have no way to tell a legitimate charge from a surprise.
Two. Check every accessorial on those invoices against its trigger. Liftgate needs a site with no dock or no unloading equipment. If you have both, ask why it was billed.
Three. Compare billed fuel percentages with the quote, and ask the carrier for the table week on any gap.
If every invoice you pull matches its quote to the cent, that is a good result, and now you know it. LanePilot is free to try at lanepilottech.com/signup.
The operation described is illustrative. Purchase order, quote and invoice figures are demonstration data.