Guide · Pricing
Accessorial charges in road freight: tail-lift, waiting time, ADR and the extras that move your invoice
The line-haul rate and the diesel surcharge are only part of a freight invoice. Accessorials are the add-ons that depend on what your sites need and what your goods are — a tail-lift, waiting time, a hazardous class. They are not hidden fees, but they catch shippers out when they are not declared up front. Here is what each one is, why it applies, and how to keep them off your invoice.
7 min read
What an accessorial actually is
A freight quote has a stable core: the line-haul base rate for the lane and the diesel surcharge that tracks fuel against an official index. Accessorials are everything else — the charges that apply only when a specific condition is true at your collection or delivery. No dock, so the truck needs a tail-lift. A hazardous class, so the move needs ADR-certified handling. A driver kept waiting two hours, so detention applies.
They are not a mark-up and they are not arbitrary. Each one pays for a real cost the carrier incurs only on certain loads: extra equipment, extra time, a restricted access window, a regulated commodity. The trouble is that most of them depend on facts the carrier cannot see when it prices the lane — and that is exactly why they surprise people.
The fix is simple and runs through this whole guide: declare the access constraints and equipment needs when you ask for the quote, give accurate booking data, and insist on an all-in written quote so any accessorial is a visible line, not a revision that lands later.
Tail-lift and kerbside handling
Most trucks are built to load and unload at a raised dock or with a forklift. When a site has neither — a shop, an office, a private address, a yard with no loading bay — the truck needs a tail-lift to lower pallets to ground level, and often a pallet truck to move them to the kerb. This is the single most common accessorial on B2C-style and small-business deliveries.
A tail-lift requires a specific vehicle, so it is not something a dispatcher can add at the door. If the collection or delivery site has no dock and no forklift, that has to be known before the truck is assigned, or the load may simply be undeliverable on the day and incur a redelivery on top.
Note the limits of kerbside service: a tail-lift delivers to the tailgate or the edge of the premises, not inside a building, not up stairs, and not to a specific room. Moving the goods further inside is a separate accessorial — see inside delivery below.
Waiting time, free time and detention
How free time works
A carrier allows a window of free time for loading or unloading once the truck has arrived — commonly somewhere in the region of one to two hours, depending on the carrier and the type of load. Within that window there is no charge. Beyond it, waiting time (also called detention or demurrage on the road) starts to accrue, usually billed per hour or part-hour.
This free-time allowance is a carrier convention, not a fixed SAVA service-level guarantee. Different carriers set different windows, and the figure that applies to your move is the one in the quote and the carrier's terms — confirm it there rather than assuming a universal standard.
Why detention happens
Detention is driver and vehicle time the carrier cannot recover. A truck stuck at a gate for three hours has missed its next slot, and the driver's regulated hours are burning regardless. The charge exists to price that lost time, not to penalise you.
It is almost always avoidable. Have the goods staged and the paperwork ready before the truck arrives, give a realistic loading window, and make sure the site has the people and equipment to turn the truck around inside the free time.
Redelivery, inside and timed delivery
Failed delivery and redelivery
If the truck arrives and cannot deliver — nobody to receive, the site closed, no tail-lift where one was needed, refused goods — the load comes back and a second attempt is scheduled. The failed attempt and the redelivery are both real journeys, so a redelivery fee covers them, and storage may apply if the goods sit at a depot between attempts.
Accurate consignee details, a working phone number, and confirmed opening hours at quote and booking stage prevent the great majority of failed deliveries.
Inside delivery
Standard delivery is to the dock or the kerb. Carrying goods inside the building, to a specific floor or room, is extra manual handling and extra time, so it is quoted as inside delivery. Say so up front if that is what the site needs — it is not part of a normal kerbside service.
Timed or booked delivery
A fixed time window, a booking reference at a receiving site, or a strict appointment all constrain how the carrier can route the truck — it can no longer be slotted efficiently with other drops. That loss of flexibility is what a timed or booked-delivery surcharge prices. If your consignee operates a delivery booking system, flag it early so the slot and the charge are built into the quote.
ADR surcharge for dangerous goods
Goods classified as dangerous under ADR — the European agreement on the carriage of hazardous goods by road — need certified handling: a trained driver, compliant documentation, segregation and load rules, and a safety adviser overseeing the operation. That capability costs more to provide, so an ADR surcharge applies. It is lane- and class-dependent: some classes and some routes carry tighter restrictions, tunnel limits or limited-access stretches, which moves the figure.
The shipper classifies the goods and supplies the safety data sheet (SDS); the carrier cannot guess the UN number or packing group. Declaring the ADR class, the UN number and the quantities at quote stage is not optional — it determines whether the load can be carried at all, and on which equipment.
SAVA handles certified packaged dangerous goods in classes 2, 3, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 8 and 9, with a dangerous-goods safety adviser (DGSA) on staff and ADR-trained drivers. It does not carry Class 1 (explosives) or Class 7 (radioactive). See our ADR service for what we accept and how to declare it.
Access surcharges: residential, ZTL and LEZ
Some addresses cost more to reach. Residential and limited-access sites mean smaller vehicles, awkward approaches and longer handling. Many European city centres now run a Zona a Traffico Limitato (ZTL) in Italy or a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) more widely, where access is restricted by time, permit or vehicle emissions standard — Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Rome, London and dozens of others operate one.
These zones can force a transfer to a compliant or smaller vehicle for the final leg, a permit, or a tightly timed window, all of which carry a surcharge. The trigger is the postcode and the vehicle, not the goods, so it is easy to declare in advance: give the full delivery address and any access notes when you book.
Pallet-exchange is a related convention rather than an access charge: some networks expect the same number of empty EUR pallets to be handed back when full ones are delivered. If your consignee does not return pallets, the unreturned-pallet cost can appear on a later invoice — worth confirming with the receiving site before the move.
A worked example: with and without accessorials
The figures below are indicative and only meant to show the shape of an invoice — your real numbers come from the written quote. Take a small palletised load on an intra-EU lane with a base line-haul rate of 600 EUR and a diesel surcharge of about 8 percent, so roughly 48 EUR. With a dock at both ends and no special requirements, the all-in is about 648 EUR.
Now the same load to a city-centre shop with no dock. Add a tail-lift at around 35 EUR, a ZTL/LEZ access surcharge of about 40 EUR, and ninety minutes of detention beyond free time at a notional 45 EUR per hour, so about 68 EUR. The invoice is now near 791 EUR — roughly a fifth higher than the no-accessorial all-in of 648 EUR, entirely from the add-ons.
None of those add-ons are unfair, and none are hidden if the site constraints are declared up front. The difference between an expected 791 EUR quote and an unexpected 791 EUR invoice is whether the tail-lift, the access zone and the likely waiting time were on the table when you booked. Use the freight-cost estimator at /resources for an indicative base and then submit the quote form so the accessorials are priced in writing.
Before you book: a quick checklist
Declare access at both ends: is there a dock and a forklift, or is a tail-lift and kerbside handling needed? Is the address residential, or inside a ZTL or LEZ? Is the goods movement inside the building, or to the kerb?
Declare the goods and the timing: if anything is ADR, give the class, UN number, packing group and SDS; if there is a booking system or a fixed delivery window, say so; confirm opening hours and a contact so there is no failed attempt.
Give accurate booking data — correct weights, pallet counts, dimensions and full addresses — so the load is not re-priced on the day. Many of these inputs also drive our calculators at /resources, so the same numbers you check there feed a cleaner quote.
Then ask for an all-in written quote. With the constraints declared, any accessorial appears as a visible line up front rather than a surprise on the invoice. Note that SAVA coordinates the right equipment and certified handling across owned and partner carriers — declaring the requirements early is what lets us assign the correct vehicle the first time.
Related guides
Related services
Ready to move a load from Spain?
Get a 24h written quote →