Accessorial Trends & How to Combat Them
By Jerry Lucente www.parcelindustry.com
The biggest difference between accessorials and the surcharges, special service codes, and other fees that the major carriers charge is that, for the most part, they are assessed and applied post-shipment.
Companies can plan and budget for anticipated surcharges and special service codes to certain degrees, but accessorials, which are typically neither applied at the point of manifest nor included in regular invoices, can be extremely difficult to factor into companies’ logistics and supply chain budgets. For this reason and others, they can be major thorns in the sides of supply chain managers and those at the executive level who have to answer for losses that are nearly impossible…