TONU, Layover and Redelivery Fees: Truckload Accessorials Explained

A carrier invoice arrives with no linehaul on it at all, only three lines: truck ordered not used at $350, a layover at $300 and a redelivery at $550. Accounts payable cannot match any of them to a delivered shipment, so the bill waits in an exception queue until the carrier's dispatcher starts declining your tenders. Meanwhile nobody in the plant can say whether that pickup was cancelled before or after the truck left its yard.

All three charges are fair when the shipper or consignee caused the lost trip, and most are avoidable when the cause shows up early. With a written trigger for each charge, three timestamps and a cause code, a freight buyer can approve or reject a line in minutes and, more usefully, see which plants and receivers keep generating them.

• What this guide covers: the trigger for each charge, how the US hours-of-service rules create layovers, what makes a second delivery attempt billable, the evidence to demand and the dispute deadlines that apply in the US.
• What it adds: a timestamped cancellation incident, a worked audit of six lines in US dollars and Indian rupees, a JSON audit rule and a tender-design checklist. More truckload and warehouse topics sit on the Logistics and Supply Chain hub.

Three charges for a truck that earned no linehaul revenue

TONU, layover and redelivery all pay a carrier for capacity it committed but could not turn into a normal paid move. Each one has its own trigger, its own clock and a different party who is usually at fault, so one blanket approval rule for "accessorials" handles all three badly.

Detention is the nearest relative. It pays for hours waiting at a dock beyond free time on a load that still moves, and its clock and evidence are set out in our guide to truck detention charge evidence. Part-load delivery conditions such as liftgate or inside delivery form a separate family, covered in our LTL accessorial charges guide. This article covers the trip that is lost, paused overnight or run a second time.

Truckload accessorial audit treats TONU, layover and redelivery as three separate charge codes on the carrier rate confirmation, each with its own trigger and evidence; in the illustrative six-line audit below, applying those triggers and paying only one of detention or layover for any hour cut a $1,950 US claim to $700.

When a TONU is owed: tender acceptance, dispatch and the cutoff

A TONU becomes payable when an accepted load is cancelled, or has no freight at pickup, after the carrier has committed a truck, and the cause sits on the shipper's side. If any of those facts is missing, the claim is a request for goodwill, not a charge the contract supports.

• Acceptance on record: an EDI 990 accept, a signed rate confirmation or a tender accepted in the shipper's portal. Without acceptance there was no booked truck to cancel.
• Truck committed: the dispatch time from the carrier, a GPS ping leaving the yard or an arrival line in the shipper's gate log.
• Cancellation after the cutoff: the cancellation timestamp compared with the cutoff written into the rate confirmation, for example two hours before the pickup appointment.
• Shipper-side cause: purchase order pushed, production not finished, wrong trailer type ordered by the shipper, or the load given to another carrier without notice.

Some cancellations look like a TONU but are not. A reefer that arrives at the wrong set point and is rejected, a 48-foot trailer sent for a 53-foot order, or a truck that arrives after the appointment window and finds the load reassigned are carrier failures. The carrier keeps that cost, and a shipper may hold a service failure against it under the contract.

The cleanest proof of the cancellation time is a cancellation sent through the same channel as the tender. In X12 that is a 204 load tender with purpose code 01 in B2A01, which gives the shipper's and the carrier's systems the same timestamp to argue from. An email or phone call leaves the cutoff question to memory.

Layover runs on the driver's hours-of-service clock

Layover pays for a truck and driver held until the next day. In the US the timing is rarely the carrier's choice: once a dock delay uses up the driver's on-duty window, federal hours-of-service rules require a 10-hour break before the truck can be driven again.

Four limits in 49 CFR 395.3 decide when a held property-carrying driver can move again:

• Rest before driving: 10 consecutive hours off duty before the driver may drive.
• The 14-hour window: no driving after the 14th consecutive hour following that rest, so a driver on duty from 05:00 cannot drive after 19:00.
• Driving ceiling: at most 11 hours of driving inside the window.
• Break rule: a 30-minute break once 8 hours of driving have accumulated without one.

So a receiver that says "come back tomorrow" at 17:00 to a driver on duty since 05:00 has, in effect, created a layover. The truck cannot reach another shipper before the window shuts, and it will not move until the driver has rested. That is why layover disputes turn on two facts: when the deferral was given and whether the carrier was actually ready to be unloaded.

India works differently. Indian contracts usually call this a halting or detention charge per day beyond agreed free days at the loading or unloading point. There is no electronic hours-of-service log tying it to a driver's legal clock, so the trigger is purely contractual: reporting time at the gate, free days and the release time on the unloading receipt.

Indian holds also run against a second clock, which is the e-way bill. Rule 138(10) of the CGST Rules makes an e-way bill for normal cargo valid for one day per 200 km, and the proviso lets validity be extended within eight hours of expiry. A two-day halt on a short lane can outlive the e-way bill, so the halting record should show who extended it and when.

Layover billing for US truckload freight follows 49 CFR 395.3: after 14 hours on duty a property-carrying driver cannot drive until 10 consecutive hours off duty, so a receiver deferral after 17:00 to a driver on duty since 05:00 normally converts the stop into one layover day.

Redelivery: when a second trip to the same consignee is billable

Redelivery is payable when the first attempt failed for a reason on the shipper's or consignee's side while the carrier was inside the agreed receiving window. A late arrival, a carrier that ignored the appointment number it was given, or a carrier equipment fault leaves the second trip as the carrier's own cost.

• Payable, consignee closed: the store or warehouse was shut during hours stated on the booking, for example a public holiday the shipper did not pass on.
• Payable, no appointment: the shipper's planner never booked a slot, or booked the wrong date, and the receiver turned the truck away.
• Payable, consignee not ready: the receiving dock was full and the consignee refused to accept that day, with a signed or written note.
• Not payable, carrier late: the truck arrived after the receiving window closed or missed its appointment by more than the agreed grace period.
• Not payable, carrier equipment: a liftgate was required on the order and the carrier sent a truck without one.

Redelivery is also different from a refusal. If the consignee rejects the goods themselves, because of damage, a cancelled order or an over-shipment, the next step is a return, a disposal or a reroute, not simply another attempt. Notice periods and charges for that case are covered in our refused shipment process guide.

In India a second attempt carries document work too. The same lorry receipt and e-way bill usually remain in use, but if the goods are moved to another vehicle for the second trip, Rule 138(5) requires Part B of FORM GST EWB-01 to be updated before the transfer, apart from a final intra-state leg of up to 50 km from the transporter's premises.

Evidence each charge needs before accounts payable approves it

Every accessorial line should arrive with its own proof, and that proof differs by charge. Settle who owns each record before the first dispute, because the person who can prove the cancellation time is rarely the person who approves the invoice.

Two habits make this table work. First, store the cause code on the load at the moment of the event, not when the invoice arrives three weeks later. Second, reject any lost-trip line that arrives without the load number of the original tender, because a TONU on a load the TMS never booked is the classic route for a duplicate or misdirected bill.

Incident trace: one cancelled pickup that produced three invoice lines

The costliest TONU disputes begin with a cancellation that only one side heard about. The trace below follows an illustrative Dallas pickup cancelled by email instead of through the tender channel, and the two follow-on charges that came with it.

1. Monday 15:12 CT, tender accepted: load LD-77812, a 53-foot dry van for Tuesday 08:00 pickup, is accepted by EDI 990. The rate confirmation states a $250 TONU after a two-hour cutoff.
2. Tuesday 05:30, truck dispatched: the carrier sends unit 4471 empty from its Fort Worth yard. The ELD shows the driver on duty from 05:00.
3. Tuesday 06:40, cancellation by email: a production planner pushes the order and emails the carrier's general inbox. No 204 cancellation is sent, so the TMS still shows the load as tendered.
4. Tuesday 07:52, truck at the gate: the guard logs unit 4471, the shipping office says there is no load, and the carrier re-dispatches the driver to a reload that the receiver defers overnight, producing a layover on another load.
5. Day 23, invoice arrives: an EDI 210 with a single $350 TONU line hits accounts payable, which auto-rejects it because the load has no proof of delivery. The carrier escalates and pauses acceptance on the lane.

In the controlled version, the planner cancels in the TMS, which sends the 204 with purpose code 01, stamps 06:40 against the 08:00 appointment and the 05:30 dispatch, and raises a pending $250 TONU accrual at once. The invoice then matches a known liability, the $100 above schedule is rejected with the contract clause attached, and the plant's late cancellation appears on its own weekly report.

Worked audit in dollars and rupees: six accessorial lines

Applying the contract schedule and the timestamps to six illustrative lines cut a $1,950 US claim to $700 and a ₹14,500 Indian claim to ₹11,000. Most of the reduction came from overlapping hours and missing triggers rather than from arguing about rates.

Load B carries the largest single reduction, and it is the most common pattern: ten detention hours that ran through the night were billed on top of a layover day. Once the deferral time is recorded, the contract converts those hours into one $300 day and two paid detention hours, which is still fair pay for the delay the receiver caused.

On the Indian loads, tax follows the transport service. CBIC Circular No. 178/10/2022-GST, paragraph 11.3, says a cancellation fee for transportation should be assessed as the principal supply. A transporter's cancellation or halting line therefore normally takes the same treatment as its freight, explained in our guide to GST on GTA services and reverse charge.

Indian vehicle cancellation charges billed by a goods transport agency follow the GST treatment of the transport service itself, because CBIC Circular No. 178/10/2022-GST paragraph 11.3 assesses transport cancellation fees as the principal supply; a ₹4,000 cancellation line should therefore carry the same tax option as the freight invoice.

Dispute windows: 180 days to contest, 18 months to sue

In the US, timing rules can end a dispute before anyone argues the facts. A shipper has 180 days from receiving a motor carrier bill to contest it, and the carrier has 180 days from the original bill to issue any additional charges.

• Carrier rebills, 13710(a)(3)(A): a bill for charges beyond those originally billed must be issued within 180 days of receipt of the original bill, or the right to collect them is lost.
• Shipper contests, 13710(a)(3)(B): an original or later bill must be contested within 180 days of its receipt to keep the right to contest.
• Basis of the rate, 13710(a)(1): on request, the carrier must give the shipper a written or electronic copy of the rate, classification, rules and practices behind a charge.

The text is in 49 U.S.C. 13710. The third right matters most for accessorials, because a TONU or layover that the rate confirmation never mentions can be held until the carrier produces the rule it relies on.

Let the audit rule open the dispute case itself. When a lost-trip line fails a trigger, the tool can hold it, start the 180-day clock from the invoice receipt date and attach the written request for the carrier's rules, so the deadline is never lost because the case sat in somebody's inbox.

{
  "rule_id": "ACC-LOSTTRIP-01",
  "applies_to": ["TONU", "LAYOVER", "REDELIVERY"],
  "tonu_payable_when": [
    "tender.status == 'ACCEPTED'",
    "dispatch_ts < cancel_ts OR gate_arrival_ts IS NOT NULL",
    "(pickup_appt_ts - cancel_ts) < cutoff_hours",
    "cause_owner IN ('SHIPPER','CONSIGNEE')"
  ],
  "detention_hours": "max(0, min(release_ts, deferral_ts) - (max(arrival_ts, appt_ts) + free_hours))",
  "layover_days": "ceil((release_ts - deferral_ts) / 24h) when deferral_ts is present",
  "redelivery_payable_when": "first_attempt_ts within receiving_window AND cause_owner != 'CARRIER'",
  "approve_amount": "min(billed_amount, schedule_amount)",
  "dispute_deadline": "invoice_received_date + 180 days"
}

Variables: cutoff_hours, free_hours and the schedule amounts come from the rate confirmation; the timestamps come from the TMS, the gate log and the carrier's dispatch record. Beyond the 180-day rule, 49 U.S.C. 14705 gives a carrier 18 months after a claim accrues to sue for charges, and a shipper 18 months to sue for overcharges.

TMS rules for timestamps, and the calls a freight buyer still makes

Comparing a timestamp with a cutoff is arithmetic and belongs in the TMS or audit tool. Deciding who caused a missed appointment, or whether a receiver's note really amounts to a deferral, still needs a person who knows the site.

Freight audit software can settle most TONU lines automatically by comparing the EDI 204 cancellation timestamp with the cutoff in the carrier rate confirmation, while cause assignment for failed deliveries stays with customer service; 49 U.S.C. 13710(a)(3)(B) leaves 180 days from bill receipt for contesting what the rules reject.

Designing accessorials out of tenders, docks and rate confirmations

The cheapest lost-trip charge is the one that never occurs. Most recurring TONUs, layovers and redeliveries trace back to a small number of plants, receivers and booking habits, and each has a specific fix in the tender, the dock schedule or the contract.

Start with a quarter of history: list every lost-trip line by plant, receiver and cause, and fix the top three sources first. A single distribution centre that books appointments without checking store hours can generate more redelivery charges than the rest of the network combined, and that is a booking-screen fix rather than a carrier negotiation.

If you are specifying a TMS or freight audit tool that should hold cancellation timestamps, deferral times and accessorial schedules on the same load record, you can describe your lanes and document flows through our request for proposal form, and we will reply with an approach scoped to them.