Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: You're listening to the Zipline Logistics Truck. Yeah. Podcast where we explore all kinds of hot topics in the logistics industry.
Get ready to learn, laugh and get your brain on.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. My name is Jesse Jewett. Joined with me as always, our director of training development, Teddy Lee Knox. Teddy.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Morning. Hello. How are you?
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. We are talking accessorials today. Accessorial charges.
Talk to me about what is an accessorial for our. For truck yasters out there.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: A headache essentially.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: But no, not necessarily. No, it is not. It is not. But this is basically an additional charge or an additional fee, something outside of the standard line haul that you would have. So this would be something that's a la carte or added onto your service, your lane, your delivery.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, most likely a lot of these happen within LTL Transportation Services.
There's like a California surcharge or we're going to get that. I don't want to spoil anything. No, I don't want to spoil anything. But you know, most of the time it's like you said, outside of a normal pickup from here, delivery here.
So let's just dive right in.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: We're talking top 20 assessorial charges.
Yeah. Number one, a lift gate. Tell me about a liftgate, Teddy.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: So a liftgate is something that allows you to essentially tailgate something from the truck to a piece of equipment that serves as almost as an elevator. So I'm really kind of going all the way back to. If you don't have any logistics knowledge, that's where I'm going with this. But it allows you to get product from a truck which is usually pretty high up off the ground, all the way to ground level.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: So this is really helpful for something that's being delivered to a home, a storage unit, stor storefront.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: But someplace without a dock.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Exactly. No dock or no forklift. Because you can get something off of a truck with just a forklift and no dock.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Boom.
Number two, redelivery charges.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: I think this one is exactly as it sounds. So you can have this for several, several reasons. Basically, there isn't the equipment on site. Maybe they go and there is no dock. They don't have a lift gate. They have to come back with the proper equipment. But it's basically another attempt at a delivery. And you can have several redelivery charges on a shipment depending on how it goes. This is where we've talked about it before, that logisticizing is so important.
If you have multiple redelivery fees. You need to talk to your provider.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: That's one of the things I think we do best is calling both pickups and receivers and asking a bunch of questions to try and make sure that we have all the stuff that we need.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: That's one of the things that we talk about in onboarding so much is it's a rite of passage to make your first couple mistakes in that training phase because you will never make them again.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: It's awful.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Next up we're talking layovers.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: A layover is. It's very similar to what you would assume when you get stuck in an airport or you know, have that layover time in between.
So this can be planned and unplanned. You can have a planned layover where you have time in between a pickup and delivery or a second stop. But usually you see it when the truck is unable to load or unload for some, for some reason.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a, a bunch of reasons could happen. Power outages, maybe missing in a delivery appointment or something by like 15 minutes and they're not going to get you the second shift, can't unload it. So you got to layover to the next day.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. You can also do this around holidays. Sometimes you have to have planned layovers.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Because it's really important. You may want to get product out of a facility by a certain time. Yeah. Maybe your receiver can't accept it until a certain time. That's where that otif and maybe D come into play.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Consignee is maybe out of office or not working on a particular day.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Shout out Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Next up. This one is from my experience primarily almost 99.9% of the time.
LTL based reclassification and reweighs.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yes.
I think. And this has evolved to be a little bit of a different animal since I've been in the industry, since I've been with Zipline, that reclassification and that reway is exactly as it sounds. You classed it and you gave the weight as something and then the carrier is telling you it's something else. This can be problematic because maybe you're just creating the weight based off of the weight of one case. You're not including the dunnage and the weight could be, I mean the classification could be a density based product that can cause some issues. So where I went with like not having any logistics knowledge, the first definition, I went to, you know, understand everything too much.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you. Those ones are challenging. Right. It requires a lot of proof. A lot of our LTL partners, certainly a lot of the big ones have scales and measurement devices, lasers that are scanning everything and making sure that everything is exactly what it, what we say it's going to be.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Next up we've got advanced notification. I'm going to take this one.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Oh, okay, fair enough.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Sometimes, you know, a driver or somebody needs to notify a receiver or a contin ahead of time for making delivery. Hey, sometimes a pickup too. Right. Like maybe it's an unmanned warehouse that's, that's storing products. So she pick up the phone. They need a 30 minute notice. You know, especially these last couple years, we see prices go down across the board as far as like line haul prices. I mean it's, you know, carriers are looking to charge for any little bit of extra that they need to complete the job. They're, they're going to throw a bill at you, which is, you know, in some cases fair. I, I get it, but that's part of the deal. So advanced notification, limited access.
Next up.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: So this is when you would have most likely a lift gate on the truck. It's basically difficult to get into. So facilities, schools, camps, nursing homes, anywhere that has limited access, AKA not a dock. So you would need special equipment, possibly additional labor to help get things offloaded, brought into the facility and sometimes even broken down. So again, storefronts, I think people would also consider this white glove sometimes.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Next up, we got lumper or driver loading or unloading.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: So I, I've always lumped, for lack of a better word, together too.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Get us back on track. Come on, Teddy, you've lumped, I've always
[00:06:36] Speaker B: lumped these together, but they couldn't actually be more different.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: The things that go into, you know, dealing with a lumper on our end and dealing with driver load and unload are very, very different when, when it comes to what we are doing and communicating with our carriers and our customers, the lumber is essentially making sure we get the right rate, sending a comm check and then putting it in the system and communicating it.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: When it comes to driver load and unload, there's a lot more that goes into the qualification of that carrier.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: You have to make sure that they understand what they're loading and unloading, that they have the right equipment and that they're able to do it. Because a lot of times if you're not clear about that, you can have some issues at the time of pickup or delivery. So even though we put those together, it's like putting temp Controlled truckload and temp LTL in the same bucket.
They have similar words but it's not the same thing. But essentially what is happening here is services to load and unload on the actual truck. Could be palletized, could be floor loaded, could need sort and seg. That is all dependent, but it is needing help.
There's no staff on the warehouse to do that specifically that belongs to that facility.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Next up, you mentioned white glove. We're talking inside delivery.
Bringing a shipment into a house maybe requires additional equipment.
I see pallet jack on here. My experience when I first got into logistics was, you know, think of home delivery. They're putting on little booties to make sure that your, your house doesn't get dirty.
Obviously it takes additional time. Sometimes they take away the old piece of furniture. That is definitely what I would call white glove service. And it comes with added costs.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: And a lot of people make the mistake of saying driver assist and meaning inside delivery. They're very, very different. And in this industry you have to be very clear.
So again, having the right partner to confirm and talk about those things is helpful because we've gotten ourselves in the position where we say driver assist.
Take it all the way upstairs, three floors, put it in the house. No.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a little bit different. Next up we got Metro pickups and deliveries. This one's a little bit unique. You know, most of our distribution centers or shippers or receivers. Most right. Are I wouldn't say rural areas, but like big warehouses. They're designed to receive trucks and large equipment. And every once in a while we got to go into downtown New York City or a congested area.
This would require obviously parking limit limitations, et cetera. So it's a good time to talk about this. Is that a lot of these, if you think about it in the way we've been describing them, they are going to be lumped in together.
Right. So when you hear fifteen hundred dollar fee to deliver into New York City. Well, when you break it down, it's a, maybe an inside delivery 500 charge. Right. There's all sorts of things that are going to add up to that, that fifteen hundred dollars.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Again, why you need the right partner to talk to you about these things? Because you think, oh, delivering to New York, I just need a certain type of truck.
Now you also need a certain type of carrier, a certain type of driver, a certain type of equipment.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Ask those questions. Next up we got fuel surcharge. This is a pretty common one across the board.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yes. So a lot of times you'll find this lumped in with your rate. This is an all in one thing. The fuel in the line haul, when you have it separated, it is the charge per mile for the lane and then the fuel added on to show the total cost of that shipment.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Next accessorial, oversized or over length.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: So this one, I feel like whenever I talk about this in training, people are always like, oh, so you need a flatbed. That's what people automatically think. If it's something big, you gotta have a flatbed. You gotta have the signs and the
[00:10:11] Speaker A: escort to get down to wide load.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Not always.
This is basically your standard palette is 40 by 48. And this is something that is bigger than that. So a different size palette, or it could also be anything that has a little bit of overhang on the palette. You need to make sure that your palette is clean and there's not normally overhang. If you get that overhang, it will be considered oversized. So it's not as simple as it just being an elliptical, and that's oversized going into the shipment. It can also be the way that
[00:10:41] Speaker A: it's packaged that tracks. We're sitting on a desk right now. A desk can be 8ft long, right? Obviously, that's larger than 40 by 48.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: So maybe, maybe have two pallet spaces. I know we've moved like fire poles, right. For like a firehouse delivery or a sign for a retail store or something like that. Those are all oversized products that can definitely fit on a dry van, but they're not on a typical pallet.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: And you can run into issues here. If again, like we were talking about with reclass and reway and ltl, if you have oversized or over length, it's usually better to go dedicated.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Because if you don't, then you could end up paying more than what this shipment is worth.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Watch out for those lasers. They're scanning your product on you. It's not 6ft long. It's 6ft 4 inches. And that adds $400 extra, at least. Next up, we got sort and sag.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: So this is similar to the lumper. A lot of times, lumper and sort and sake are also used interchangeably, and this depends upon what you have on the pallet. So often sort and sag is breaking down the product, but it could be by skew level.
So if you have sort and seg and you have multiple different skus, the sort and seg is going to be more intricate than it would be if you just have one sku.
So you have to understand your Retailers and your receivers that you're going into places like Kehi and UNFI sometimes charge more for the lumber fees if you have multiple SKUs and if your multiple skus are not layered properly.
So I know I'm going into best practices rather than the definition, but essentially this is a fee that's based off of the weight of the package and the size and allows products to be taken off the pallet and stored correctly or shipped on to, you know, actual storefronts.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So you think like flavors of a beverage product. Right. We're gonna separate out this kiwi strawberry and the mango lime or whatever.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Both sound delicious.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Those are all gonna sort and seg them out and that's gonna be an extra charge.
Hazardous materials.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: So this is materials that are I guess required by the department of transportation to be properly documented, have extra paperwork because they need to be transported and I guess shown carefully. So cinnamon is actually a hazmat. It's flammable.
Sometimes cherry flavored can be flammable. So there are things that are hazardous that you wouldn't necessarily think about.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Hmm. We shortened it up to hazmat Hazmat and they definitely can't ride with other products. That's a, that's a very, very large red flag for some of our LTL providers and that's why they charge extra.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: For those of you who are unfamiliar with hazardous or hazmat material, next time you're driving carefully, look at trucks and you'll see a little placard. It's a little diamond placard. And that is how you could tell if there's hazardous material. Don't panic. They know what they're doing. But just something. If you've seen those now, you know what they mean.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: After hour deliveries. Teddy.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: So this is anything outside of the normal time of transportation, which can change slightly depending on where you're picking up or delivering to. But essentially anything before, I would say 7am and anything after, like 9pm are is usually after hours. Something where there's not a lot of staff to be able to help essentially. And it's, it's outside of normal operating hours. This is an extra cost. This is a value add service.
And there are a lot of places that have after hour fees or I guess deliveries.
So you will incur those fees. I do think they are more expensive on LTL than they are on dedicated. So keep an eye out for that
[00:14:17] Speaker A: 100% truck order not used or T O N U. I've heard some people call it a ton U.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Yes. My favorite Thing is, when people first come into zipline, they're always like, hey, who's Tony? Why do we owe money? I think it's really funny, but again, it's essentially canceling something and not using the truck order within a certain amount of time. We like to do it within a couple hours. So if we have something canceled at 5pm that's picking up at 8am that's not necessarily enough time for that truck to reroute that driver. So you may incur a tonu also if the driver's already on the way or dispatched. Same scenario here.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah. We're trying to be fair to both our customer and our carrier partners.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. And there are, there are this kind of changes across modes as well. You also have something considered an EONU equipment order not used, that can be for reefer, LTL and rail and sometimes even partial. And their services are a little bit more, I guess, tighter, not as flexible. So those eonus can sometimes be more
[00:15:17] Speaker A: expensive than those tonus diversion miles.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Basically telling the driver to go to a different destination than what they were already going to.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah. We're kind of lump these next ones together. Additional stops. Right. A lot of these can have multiple meetings. Right. A typical additional stop would be like, hey, you're going to pick up here and deliver to these two places in Columbus.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Ohio, for example. But diversion miles, that could technically be, hey, thanks for checking in. And our, our, our shipper at 1500 Jesse Avenue, you're going to go down to 1550 and get loaded there.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: And so that could be an additional stop. That could be some diversion miles. There's, there's definitely some discussion and some gray area there.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Crossover.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: I agree. Well said.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: How about storage?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: So this is something where you are basically taking product and storing it, whether that's in the trailer or in a facility.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Other than what the pickup and the delivery are. So again, you can see this where there's a storage facility where you keep it in the trailer. You see this a lot for containers and rail orders. And then when it comes to ltl. Yeah, ltl. And when it comes to standard truckload, you can have this where they're storing it until it's available. Or sometimes depending on the. The product and the integrity of the product and what that needs to be, you actually take it into a facility and store it there.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It's important to remind to remember that most carriers want to get, you know, the way they make money is to pick up and deliver product.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Right. So if you run into A situation where, oh, the delivery was supposed to be on this day, it was Monday, but for whatever reason, something happened that they can't control. It's now ready. Now it has to be delivered on Friday. Well, we got four days that either we can't get it off our truck or it's taking up space in our warehouse or et cetera. So we got to charge you a storage fee.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: That makes sense. C E N T S. Ooh, that's a hunt. Last but not least, detention.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: This one, I think, is an interesting term as well, because depending upon the mode that you're talking about, it means something different. But the most common term is when the driver is waiting at pickup or delivery for more than the allotted time, which is about two hours if they're on time.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: That's a good caveat.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: But again, there are relationships that are worth spending a little time and extra money on. So sometimes you. You do it either way. But essentially, shippers are allowed to have two hours to load and unload trucks. And most of the time, that's all you need. Most of the time, 45 minutes is all you need. But if you go over that, you're cutting into the driver's hours of service and how long they actually have to be on the road, how long they are actually allowed to be in their truck. And that can cause problem with transits. So we really need to be effective. So it's not only just a cost that allows drivers to make, or, sorry, trucking companies, drivers to make money. It's really important because if you are going into that time, we're not going to be able to make the transit and your product's not going to be able to get on the shelf. So paying attention to these charges can actually help make your network more efficient. It's not just, oh, this is a charge, roll my eyes and get over it. They can help tell a story of how efficient you are doing things.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Certainly from where we're sitting, we don't want any of these to happen. Right. We prefer that none of these happen like. Right.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Obviously, with the exception of additional stops and layovers, those are sometimes helpful services.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely that. Broadly speaking, we're putting ourselves out there. We're logisticizing, like you like to say, going above and beyond. We're making sure that these are being transported as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible, and things happen. It's important that you understand that and that these charges are accepted and paid efficiently. Yes, we owe that to our carrier partners. And I think we do a really, really good job of explaining that relationship to our customer partners. Also.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: As always, if you learned something, give us a call. 888 Go Zipline www.ziplinelogistics.com if you learned something today, leave a five star review at Apple or Spotify Podcasts. Yes, thank you again as always for joining us on another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Teddy.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Thank you.
