I 𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐄 accessorial charges. They drain your budget. They dip into your margin. They 𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘺 everyone that has to see the invoice.

In many ways, they're 100% 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞. A waste of your time reviewing invoices to confirm they were accurate. A waste of your team's time trying to track down what went wrong. A waste of your hard-earned budget.

It doesn't matter if it's sea container 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 at the dock, 𝘳𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩, or 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 charges. I hate them all, and I often feel like it's my life's goal to 𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐚𝐥𝐥.

Am I hitting a nerve here? Because it sure hits mine.

The beauty of accessorials is that they're often 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐱, often with some much-needed process development or by implementing a system that you may have needed for a while anyway.

This video discusses some of the things I've seen on accessorial charges and touches on how I approach them in a Transportation Network Optimization project.