What Are Accessorial Charges?
Every UPS, FedEx, and DHL invoice includes two kinds of charges: the base transportation rate, and a long list of additional fees called accessorial charges. These cover anything beyond standard pickup-and-delivery – address corrections, residential delivery, additional handling, Saturday service, and dozens of other line items that vary by carrier and service level.
Common accessorial charges
- Address correction surcharges – billed when a carrier corrects an inaccurate address on a shipment.
- Residential delivery surcharges – additional fees for delivering to a home rather than a business address.
- Additional handling surcharges – charged for packages that are oversized, irregularly shaped, or exceed weight thresholds.
- Saturday delivery/pickup fees – premium charges for weekend service.
- Delivery area surcharges – fees applied to shipments going to extended or remote delivery zones.
- Dimensional weight charges – a special case covered in detail in our Dimensional Weight Audit guide.
Why accessorial charges are easy to overpay
Accessorial charges are billed automatically by carrier systems, and they’re rarely broken out clearly on a standard invoice summary – they show up buried in line-item detail, one shipment at a time. That makes them one of the easiest charge types to overpay without noticing: an address correction surcharge applied in error, a residential fee charged on a commercial address, or a Saturday fee on a weekday delivery can each look like a routine charge unless someone checks it against the actual shipment record.
How an accessorial charges audit works
TCR’s parcel audit reviews every accessorial charge on your UPS, FedEx, and DHL invoices line by line, comparing what was billed against your actual shipment data and carrier contract terms. Any accessorial charge that was misapplied, duplicated, or billed in error becomes a claim filed on your behalf.
This is one part of TCR’s full parcel audit process – see what a parcel audit checks for the complete list of charge types we review.
No cost unless we recover money
Like all of TCR’s audit services, there’s no upfront cost. TCR’s fee is a percentage of what we recover – if we don’t find and collect anything, you don’t pay anything. Most shippers recover between 2% and 5% of their annual parcel and package spend through a properly run audit.
