A short pay is when a carrier invoices for one amount and receives less, with a deduction the carrier did not agree to in advance. Small carriers absorb a surprising volume of them, partly because chasing one takes hours that a two-truck operation does not have, and partly because a lot of short pays are technically correct.
The pattern is consistent. Almost none of them are arguments about whether the freight moved. They are arguments about whether the carrier can prove a detail, and the carrier cannot, because the document that would have proved it was never collected.
Here are the recurring ones.
The proof of delivery is missing, illegible or unsigned
The most common deduction of all, and the most avoidable. A bill of lading photographed at an angle in a dark dock, with the receiver's signature cut off the bottom of the frame, is not proof of delivery. Neither is a clean scan of a document nobody signed.
The fix is procedural rather than clever. The document is captured before the driver leaves the property, all four corners visible, signature and printed name legible, date and time written on it, and any exception noted on the document itself rather than reported verbally. A driver who has left the yard cannot go back for a signature.
The load number on the invoice does not match the broker's
Brokerages run high volumes and match on reference numbers. An invoice carrying the shipper's reference instead of the broker's load number, or carrying a transposed digit, does not fail loudly. It sits in an exceptions queue until somebody works through it, which can be weeks.
The number that goes on the invoice is the one on the rate confirmation, copied rather than retyped.
Detention is claimed without documented times
Detention is the deduction category where carriers lose the most and complain the loudest. In most cases the claim fails for the same reason: the in and out times are the driver's recollection rather than a record.
What survives a challenge is a set of consistent timestamps that agree with each other. The gate arrival time noted on the bill of lading by the receiver. The ELD record showing the vehicle stationary. A photograph with an embedded timestamp. A message to the broker sent at the moment the free time expired, not the following day.
That last one matters more than carriers expect. Most brokerage detention policies require notification while the truck is still under load, precisely so the broker can go back to their customer in real time. A detention claim first raised on the invoice is usually declined on the policy, not on the facts.
Accessorials were not approved in writing
Layover, extra stops, driver assist, pallet exchange, reefer fuel, truck ordered not used. Every one of these is payable and every one of these is regularly refused, because the approval was a phone call.
The rule that removes the problem entirely is that no accessorial charge is incurred without an email or a message from a named person at the brokerage confirming it, before it happens where possible and immediately after where not. A one-line reply saying yes to a layover is worth several hundred dollars at invoice time.
The lumper receipt was not captured
Lumper fees are reimbursable and are refused constantly for want of a receipt. The receipt is a thin piece of paper handed to a tired driver at a dock at four in the morning. If it is not photographed on the spot, it is gone.
The invoice was submitted after the billing window
Most brokerage carrier agreements contain a submission deadline. Thirty days is common, some are shorter. Submissions after the deadline can be reduced or refused outright, and the brokerage is within its rights.
Small carriers miss these windows routinely, not through carelessness but because billing is done in batches when somebody has a free evening. A load delivered on the second of the month and invoiced on the eighth of the following month has already used more of the window than the owner realises.
The invoice does not match the rate confirmation
Fuel surcharge calculated differently, an accessorial at a rate other than the one confirmed, or a linehaul figure that reflects a verbal renegotiation nobody documented. Any mismatch between the rate confirmation and the invoice stops the payment while somebody reconciles it.
Where a rate was genuinely renegotiated in transit, the revised rate confirmation is the document that needs to exist. A verbal agreement with a broker who has since left the company is worth nothing.
The document set, in order
Everything above reduces to collecting a fixed set of documents at fixed points in the load rather than at the end.
- At booking: the signed rate confirmation, with the broker's load number.
- At pickup: the signed bill of lading, the seal number, arrival and departure times.
- In transit: written approval for any accessorial, and a timestamped notification the moment free time expires.
- At delivery: the signed proof of delivery with printed name, date and time, legible and complete, plus the lumper receipt if there was one.
- At billing: the invoice matching the rate confirmation line for line, submitted within the window.
None of this is difficult. All of it is tedious, and tedium performed at four in the morning by a driver who wants to sleep is where the failures come from. The operations that do not get short-paid are the ones where somebody who is awake and at a desk is collecting the documents as the load runs, and where the invoice goes out the same day rather than at the end of the month.
If you are absorbing deductions and are not sure which category they fall into, pull your last twenty settlement statements and sort the deductions by reason code. The pattern is usually obvious within an hour, and it is usually two or three causes rather than twenty.