The short answer: freight bills get collected by the party with the best paperwork and the least patience. Rate confirmations, BOLs, and PODs make freight debt unusually provable — the money gets lost by waiting, not by failing to prove the debt.
Bill it clean the first time
Most “disputes” on freight bills are really paperwork gaps the debtor exploits. Freight generates its own proof automatically, by people with no stake in your receivable — and the advantage gets wasted because nobody assembles it until the account is already a fight. Assemble at billing, not at escalation:
| Document | What it establishes | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Signed rate confirmation | The price, the terms, who agreed to pay | Verbal rate increases nobody papered |
| Bill of lading | The shipment and its parties | Missing consignee name, no piece count |
| Signed proof of delivery | That you performed | Illegible signature, no date, no printed name |
| Invoice | The demand, matching the rate confirmation line for line | Line items the rate confirmation lacks |
| Accessorial records | Detention, layover, lumper, TONU, reconsignment | Reconstructed from memory weeks later |
The regulation tells you what belongs on the BOL. Under 49 CFR 373.101, a motor carrier subject to § 373.100 (carriers subject to 49 U.S.C. subtitle IV, part B) must issue a receipt or bill of lading for property tendered for interstate or foreign commerce showing the names of consignor and consignee, origin and destination points, number of packages, description of freight, and weight, volume, or measurement where that applies to rating the freight. A BOL missing the consignee’s name or the piece count is a document a payables clerk can argue with.
The test to run before you call anyone: can you produce the complete file for one load — five documents plus the payment correspondence — in under five minutes? The party who can do that in a single email argues from the record.
Run a real aging discipline
Freight receivables rot fast. An account past 60 days isn’t “slow” — it’s a decision the debtor made. Set trigger points and honor them:
| Age | Action |
|---|---|
| Due date | Invoice confirmed received, with complete paperwork attached |
| +15 days | Call — not email. Get a named person and a commitment date |
| +30 days | Written demand with a hard escalation date |
| +45–60 days | Escalate: agency placement, bond claim where applicable |
Why 90 days is the wrong trigger
The 90-day review is an accounting habit borrowed from industries with longer cycles; the rules on extending credit for a freight bill set a far tighter frame. Under 49 CFR 377.203, the credit period begins on the day following presentation of the freight bill and runs 15 days — including Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays — unless a tariff rule sets a different one, and a tariff-set period may not exceed 30 calendar days. The carrier’s authority to release freight before charges are paid is itself conditioned on taking reasonable actions to assure payment within those periods.
The outside edge the regulation contemplates is 30 days. At 90, you are two credit periods past the end of one, and the debtor has learned that nothing happens.
Quick pay is a price, not a collection tool
The same regulation contemplates the other side of the trade: 377.203(f) permits tariff rules discounting for prompt payment where credit is extended. Cost it as an annualized rate on the days you buy back, and watch the broker who quietly moves everything onto quick pay to manage its own cash with your discount.
Detention, layover, and accessorials
These are the first charges a debtor “loses” and the last they intend to pay. Bill them on the same invoice as the line haul where the contract allows — small orphan invoices die in accounts payable — and enforce them the same way.
What makes an accessorial collectible is the record, built at the time:
- The authority. The rate confirmation is where detention, layover, TONU, and reconsignment either exist or don’t. Where it conditions detention on notice within a set window, that timestamped notification is part of the claim.
- The clock. Facility in and out times, gate records, and the ELD or driver log covering the same window. Two independent sources beat one.
- The out-of-pocket. Lumper receipts, scale tickets, and reefer fuel records are the easiest to support — a third party documented them, and they are plainly a pass-through. They are also the ones carriers most often eat, because the receipt stayed in the cab.
The factoring wrinkle
If you factor, know exactly which party owns the claim on each unpaid load. On recourse factoring, a charged-back load is yours to collect — and it comes back old, which means immediate escalation, not a restart of the reminder cycle.
This is the step most often skipped, and it can stop a collection effort cold. Factoring the invoice assigned the account, and Texas has codified what follows: under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 9.406(a), an account debtor may discharge its obligation by paying the assignor until, but not after, it receives a notification of the assignment. After that it must pay the assignee, and paying you does not discharge the debt.
So before anyone sends a demand, settle in writing whether the invoice is assigned or charged back, whether the factor has reassigned the claim to you by name, and whether a notification of assignment is outstanding. Whether you are the right party is the first thing a lawyer asks.
When the debtor is a broker
A broker owing carriers is a special case, because there is security behind its registration. Each broker must maintain $75,000 in financial security — a surety bond or trust fund — regardless of how many branch offices or sales agents it has (49 U.S.C. § 13906(b)(3); 49 CFR § 387.307(a)).
It is one $75,000 bond standing behind the whole broker, not a $75,000 guarantee for your load. Payment is conditional: the broker consents, or it fails to respond to adequate notice and the surety then finds the claim valid, or the claim goes unresolved and is reduced to a judgment (§ 13906(b)(2)). Once notice of the broker’s financial failure or insolvency is published, the surety advertises for claims over a 60-day window, then pays uncontested claims within 30 days — pro rata, a share rather than the full amount, if the claims exceed the available security (§ 13906(b)(6)). A broker that collapses owing dozens of carriers does not produce $75,000 for each of them. The full playbook is in Freight broker won’t pay? A carrier’s playbook.
The broker may not be the only candidate. For property moving by motor carrier, 49 U.S.C. § 13706 allocates liability for the rates among the shipper or consignor, the beneficial owner on a reconsigned or diverted load, and the consignee — and a consignee acting only as an agent, without beneficial title, escapes additional rates found due later only if it gave the delivering carrier written notice before delivery. Ask who else is reachable before writing a load off.
Mind the short federal clock
Under 49 U.S.C. § 14705(a), a carrier providing transportation or service subject to jurisdiction under 49 U.S.C. chapter 135 must begin a civil action to recover its charges within 18 months after the claim accrues. That is much shorter than the four-year statute most Texas commercial debt runs on. Subsection (g) fixes accrual: a claim related to a shipment of property accrues on delivery or tender of delivery.
The clock starts at delivery — not when you invoiced, and not when the broker last promised a check. Months of promises and a factor chargeback can put an account deep into that window before anyone checks the date. If the debtor sits outside Texas, the state-by-state picture matters too. (General information, not legal advice — which period governs is fact-specific. Confirm your dates with counsel.)
The Texas spine
In a Texas court, three provisions do most of the work.
Limitations. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.004(a)(3) gives four years on an action for debt, and § 16.004(c) applies the same four years to an open or stated account, accruing on the day the parties’ dealings in the matter cease — the backdrop for ordinary Texas commercial debt, not a substitute for the federal 18 months where that governs.
Sworn account. Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 185 lets a properly sworn account stand as prima facie evidence of the claim. It reaches an action founded on an open account, on “any claim for a liquidated money demand based upon written contract or founded on business dealings between the parties,” or on “personal service rendered, or labor done or labor or materials furnished, on which a systematic record has been kept.” A line-haul invoice built from a signed rate confirmation and POD, on a running ledger with payments and credits applied in order, is the shape the rule describes. The leverage is conditional: a verified denial under Rule 93(10) destroys the prima facie effect, and a defective affidavit means the rule never applied. The mechanics, and the filing that kills it, are here.
Attorney’s fees, and the step almost everyone skips. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 38.001(b) allows recovery of reasonable attorney’s fees from an individual or organization “in addition to the amount of a valid claim and costs” on claims including rendered services, a sworn account, and an oral or written contract, with carve-outs for quasi-governmental, religious, and charitable entities. Section 38.002 attaches three conditions: an attorney’s representation, presentment of the claim to the opposing party or its authorized agent, and that “payment for the just amount owed must not have been tendered before the expiration of the 30th day after the claim is presented.”
Presentment runs from the demand, not the invoice. Sitting on a file for months and then suing the week after finally writing a letter ages the debt without starting the fee clock. The letter that satisfies the condition is broken down clause by clause here.
Four clocks, four different starting guns:
| Clock | Starts | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Credit period — 49 CFR 377.203 | Day after the freight bill is presented | 15 days; no tariff period over 30 |
| Fee presentment — Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 38.002 | The date you present the claim | 30 days without tender |
| Carrier’s action for charges — 49 U.S.C. § 14705(a) | Delivery or tender of delivery | 18 months |
| Texas debt and open account — § 16.004 | Accrual; open account, when dealings cease | 4 years |
Collection costs can also be a contract term rather than a fee award. By tariff rule, 49 CFR 377.203(g)(1) lets a carrier assess reasonable and certain liquidated damages for collection expense, subject to the conditions in (g)(2) — among them a revised freight bill or notice of the charges within 90 days after the credit period expires. Or, under (g)(3), the carrier assesses collection charges through bill of lading terms instead, outside its tariff. Either way, only if it was in place before the load moved.
When to hand it off
Escalate to a trucking collection agency when any of these is true:
- The account crosses 60 days with no committed payment date
- A number that used to pick up stops answering
- You hear “the check’s processing” a second time
- The debtor is a broker showing fold-up signs — new MC number, changed entity, non-payment chatter on load boards
What changes at handoff is capacity, not willingness. A dispatcher with a full board cannot also skip trace a principal who has moved, put someone at the terminal address, and work a successor entity. That is our side of it: commercial B2B collection, nationwide through a network of licensed collection attorneys, with judgment enforcement after. We are a collection agency, not a law firm — we do not file suit, file liens, or give legal advice; a file that needs any of that goes to a licensed collection attorney. Placement is on contingency and the fee is agreed before you place anything.
Three more decisions. Writing it off or placing it is arithmetic; the write-off only wins if the receivable is dead. If a first agency gave the file back, second placement is a different file with different leverage. If the broker files bankruptcy, the creditor deadlines come from the court; a forfeited Texas charter changes who you can pursue, not whether the debt exists.
Sitting on aged freight receivables? Get a free case review — we’ll tell you where each account stands, and what the file is missing.
General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.