Accessorials at Uber Freight

During my time as an intern at Uber Freight, I have found myself enjoying entering accessorials. This has become my favorite task of the day. The email inbox I have been working in (Rich Products Northeast) has a special folder where accessorials collect, and when I have time, I knock them out.

What are accessorials? According to Uber Freight, an accessorial is “a carrier’s charges for additional services beyond the linehaul charge”. A linehaul is the baseline rate to get the load from point A to point B. There are so many other things that carriers can charge that I had no idea about before my internship.

When we get a request for an accessorial from a carrier, we first confirm that the amount requested is correct using the receipt or email threads we have on the load. Then, we enter the amount in our system to be charged to our customer, Rich Products, to reimburse the carrier.

Here are a few accessorials we encounter every day:

Fuel Surcharge- this one is pretty obvious; this is the charge for the fuel to get the truck from point A to point B. Every load will have a linehaul and a fuel surcharge. This charge depends on the miles in the route and the average cost of fuel.

Lumper- a lumper is a worker who is at the delivery location who can be paid to unload the truck. Not every delivery location has lumpers. How it works: carriers pay for them, get a receipt, send it to us, then we charge our customer (Rich Products) to reimburse the carrier. The cost of a lumper varies based on location and amount of product being unloaded.

TONU- this stands for Truck Ordered Not Used. Sometimes an order will be cancelled, but word will not get to the driver in time. The driver will show up, be told the order is cancelled, and the carrier will then request a TONU to make up for the money lost from driving all the way there and not picking up a load. Another instance a TONU will be used is when there is some confusion, and two drivers will show up to get the same load. A TONU will be granted to one of the carriers and the other will pick up the order. A TONU is always the same amount of money (an amount agreed upon between Rich Products and the carriers).

Detention- detention is when a driver has to wait longer than two hours for their truck to be unloaded (two hours is the length of time Rich Products has agreed upon with the carriers, so this may vary). After the two ‘free’ hours, the carrier is reimbursed an agreed upon amount per every hour a driver is left waiting.

Layover- this is just a long detention. After the detention fees hit a certain amount, Rich Products cannot be charged any more detention fees for that day. The detention turns into a layover. Sometimes, a driver will stay at a distribution center for the weekend, so they will request two layovers instead of an hourly fee.

Ferry- Since I work in the Northeast, I have to deal with ferry charges. These are extremely expensive, and we try to consolidate shipments as much as we can in order to lower the cost. The driver will have their truck weighed and pay the ferry fee, then they will send the receipt to us so we can have Rich Products reimburse them.

High Cost Delivery Area- This one is my favorite. This is a fee for a driver to drive and unload in a high-cost area. Most of the time, this is New York City. I have always wondered how trucks are able to get around in a big city. They do it, but they charge extra.

There are many more accessorial charges, but these are a few that we use the most. Accessorials are one thing that I have become familiar with that I have not yet learned about at my time at the UofA. Everything that I have learned about so far is valuable information that I will be able to use the rest of my time in college and in my future career, accessorials are just one example.