If a carrier sends you a balance-due freight invoice 180 days or more after you received the original bill for that shipment, federal law says the carrier has not preserved its right to collect the additional amount. Under 49 U.S.C. 13710, a carrier billing charges beyond what it originally billed must do so within 180 days of the shipper’s receipt of the original bill. The same section runs the clock the other way: you have 180 days from receipt of a bill to contest it if you want to preserve your right to challenge.
That is the whole rule, and it is short enough to quote in a dispute email. What follows is how to use it without overstating it, because carriers respond badly to a shipper who cites a statute that does not reach the facts.
The pattern this kills is familiar. A load delivers in March. The invoice comes, you audit it, you pay it, the file closes. In November a “balance due” or “rebill” or “supplemental invoice” arrives for the same PRO number, usually for a reweigh, a reclass, an accessorial nobody mentioned at the time, or a corrected fuel line. The carrier’s collections desk treats it as a routine receivable. It is not routine. It is an additional charge, and additional charges have a deadline.
What a balance-due invoice actually is
Carriers use several names for the same document: balance due, rebill, supplemental, corrected invoice, adjustment, revision. The label on the page does not decide what it is. Two questions do.
Was there an original bill for this shipment? If yes, and the new document asks for money above what that bill asked for, it is an additional charge. That is the 13710 category.
Or is this the first bill you ever received for this shipment? Then what you have is a late original invoice rather than a rebill, which is a different problem governed by different rules, and the 180-day additional-charge clock is the wrong argument.
The distinction matters more than it sounds, because carriers sometimes present a first-time invoice under a “balance due” header when a broker or a co-loading partner billed part of the move earlier. Before you write anything, find the original invoice in your own records and confirm what it charged.
Rule out one more case early. If the “new” invoice charges the same lines for the same amounts as the original, it is not an additional charge at all, it is a second presentation of the same debt, and the argument you want is the one in how to detect a duplicate freight invoice, not this one.
The two clocks in 13710
The section sets two 180-day windows that point in opposite directions. Both start from the same event: the shipper’s receipt of the original freight bill.
| Clock | Who it binds | What it runs from | What lapsing costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Additional-charge billing | The carrier | Your receipt of the original bill | The carrier does not preserve its right to collect the additional charges |
| Contest window | The shipper or payor | Your receipt of the bill (original or subsequent) | You do not preserve your right to contest that bill |
Read the columns together and the design is obvious. The statute makes freight billing final within a predictable period so neither side carries open-ended exposure. A carrier that discovers an underbilling has six months to fix it. A shipper that discovers an overcharge has six months to say so.
So the rule cuts both ways in your own operation. If your AP process takes five months to notice a bad fuel surcharge, you have burned most of your own window. The deadlines that matter to a freight payables desk are collected in every freight billing deadline with the rule behind it, and this is one of the two that most often gets discovered too late.
Do not overstate the rule
This is where disputes get lost. Three cautions, and you should build all three into how you write.
“Not preserved” is not the same as “void.” The statute speaks in terms of preserving rights to collect and rights to contest. It is a limitation on the remedy, not a magic eraser that deletes the invoice from existence. In practice, a carrier facing a well-stated 13710 objection usually credits the rebill, because litigating a six-figure receivable is not worth it over one late supplemental. But you should write “the charge is not collectible under 13710” rather than “the charge is illegal.”
Your contract may say something different. Freight billing is contractual before it is regulatory. Your transportation agreement, the rules tariff it incorporates, and the rate confirmation for the load can all set billing and dispute windows, and many set shorter ones than 180 days. A rules tariff with a 30-day dispute window is a real term you agreed to, whatever the statute allows. Read your own paper before you cite anyone else’s. Which clauses to look for is the substance of what a rate confirmation and a carrier invoice have to agree on.
Coverage is not universal. 13710 sits in the part of Title 49 that governs motor carrier transportation subject to the Board’s jurisdiction. Exempt commodities, some contract carriage arrangements, ocean moves, parcel, and freight forwarder relationships do not all sit in the same place. If a dispute is going to turn entirely on this section, confirm the move is within its reach rather than assuming. For a $180 accessorial that is over-lawyering. For a $40,000 reclass rebill it is the first thing to check.
Establishing the two dates
The rule turns on two dates, and neither one is the date printed on the invoice.
Date of receipt of the original bill. The statute runs from the shipper’s receipt, not from the carrier’s invoice date, not from the delivery date. Receipt is what you must be able to prove. In an emailed-invoice world that is usually a message timestamp, an EDI 210 acknowledgment, or the entry timestamp your TMS or AP system stamped on intake. If your process is “someone prints it and drops it in a tray,” you have no receipt date and you will end up arguing from the invoice date, which is worse for you when the carrier dated it late and better for you when they dated it early.
Date of receipt of the balance-due bill. Same evidence, same systems. Capture it the moment it lands, before anyone touches the charge.
Then it is arithmetic. Count calendar days from receipt of the original bill to receipt of the balance-due bill. Past 180 and the carrier’s additional charge is outside the window.
An illustrative example, using round numbers rather than a real account. Say you receive the original invoice for PRO 4471820 on March 3 and pay it on March 20. On October 8 a balance-due invoice arrives for $612 in reclassification charges on the same PRO. March 3 to October 8 is 219 days. The additional charge was billed outside the window, and your reply says so with both dates and both invoice numbers on the face of it.
What to do when the rebill is inside 180 days
Most balance-due invoices you receive will be inside the window, and the deadline argument does nothing for you. That is fine. A timely additional charge still has to be a correct additional charge, and it still has to be authorized.
Run this order:
- Confirm it is not a duplicate. Compare line by line against the original invoice, not just totals. Identical charges under a new invoice number are a duplicate, defined for these purposes at 49 CFR 378.2 as two or more payments for transporting the same shipment.
- Demand itemization. Under 49 CFR 373.103, a freight or expense bill must show the exact rates assessed and the total charges due with the nature and amount of each charge, along with the consignor and consignee, shipment date, origin and destination, package count, freight description, weight or volume, route and participating carriers, transfer points, and remittance address. A rebill that reads “BAL DUE 612.00” with no explanation does not meet that standard, and asking for the itemization is a reasonable request with a rule behind it.
- Test the charge on its merits. A reweigh needs the scale ticket and the certification. A reclass needs the characteristic that changed and the NMFC item relied on. An accessorial needs authorization on the rate confirmation or a contemporaneous record from the day of service, the two-document test worked through in disputing a liftgate fee on a dock-to-dock delivery.
- Test the authorization. Even a correct charge has to be a charge you agreed to pay. Silence on the rate con and silence in the tariff is a contractual answer, not a factual one.
- Note your own 180 days. Your contest window on the rebill starts at your receipt of the rebill. Do not let a slow internal review consume it.
If you already paid the balance-due invoice
Paying converts the problem. Once money has moved, you are no longer contesting an invoice, you are recovering an overcharge after you already paid, and the overcharge rules in 49 CFR Part 378 apply.
Two of them are useful to know before you write.
Under 49 CFR 378.4, an overcharge claim must be accompanied by the freight bill, the rate, classification, weight or tariff authority relied on, and payment information. The same section provides that inadequate documentation alone cannot disqualify a claim, which is a genuine protection, but send the complete package the first time so nobody has a reason to slow-walk it.
Under 49 CFR 378.8, the processing carrier must pay, decline to pay, or settle each written overcharge claim within 60 days of receipt, absent a written agreement to extend for extenuating circumstances. That duty is triggered by a written claim. Under 49 CFR 378.5, a carrier must promptly begin investigating on receipt of any claim, written or otherwise, but only a written claim starts the 378.8 clock. A phone call to your rep is not a claim. Email it.
In the other direction, under 49 CFR 378.9, when a carrier itself discovers an overcharge, a duplicate payment, or an overcollection, it must refund within 30 days. Most carriers do exactly that. Most billing errors on both sides are process artifacts, not fraud, and the tone of your letter should reflect that if you want the credit issued this week rather than routed to legal.
The reply to a late balance-due invoice
Keep it to the two dates, the two invoice numbers, and one request. Do not argue the merits of the charge and the deadline in the same paragraph, because a carrier that concedes the deadline does not need to hear the rest.
Subject: Invoice 991204 (balance due, PRO 4471820) - additional charges
billed outside the 49 U.S.C. 13710 window
Hello,
We received invoice 991204 on 10/08/2026, described as a balance due
against PRO 4471820, in the amount of $612.00 for reclassification.
The original freight bill for this shipment, invoice 884019, was received
by us on 03/03/2026 and paid in full on 03/20/2026. Copies of both the
original bill and our remittance advice are attached.
Invoice 991204 charges an amount additional to the charges on the original
bill, and it was presented 219 days after our receipt of that bill. Under
49 U.S.C. 13710, a carrier must bill charges additional to those originally
billed within 180 days of the shipper's receipt of the original bill to
preserve its right to collect them.
On that basis we are declining invoice 991204 and asking you to void it.
If you believe the original bill was received on a different date, please
send your transmission record for it and we will review.
Please confirm the invoice has been closed.
Thank you,
[Name]
[Company] | [Phone] | [Email]Attach the original invoice, proof of payment, and the intake timestamp for the original bill if your AP system can produce one. The receipt date is the only fact in the letter a carrier can contest, so document it hardest.
Build the check into intake, not into collections
Late rebills get paid because a $612 invoice with a valid PRO number looks like every other invoice at the moment it enters the queue, and the person approving it has no visible reason to ask when the original bill for that PRO arrived.
Three controls fix that, in rough order of effort:
- Stamp a receipt date on every inbound freight bill, automatically. Everything in this post depends on that one field. If you take nothing else, take this.
- Flag any invoice whose PRO, BOL, or load number already exists in your history. That single rule catches duplicates, rebills, and late supplementals in one pass, and it is the backbone of three-way matching an invoice against the rate con and the POD.
- Put a 180-day aging column on the flagged queue. Days from original-bill receipt to today. Anything over 180 goes to a human before it goes to payment.
None of this requires new software. It requires the receipt date to exist as data, the same prerequisite for running your own contest window before it closes.
The checklist
- Find the original invoice for the same PRO or load number. Note its receipt date, not its invoice date.
- Confirm the new document charges more than the original, rather than repeating it. Repeats are duplicates.
- Count calendar days from receipt of the original bill to receipt of the balance-due bill.
- Over 180 days: decline with both dates and both invoice numbers, cite 49 U.S.C. 13710, attach the original bill and remittance advice.
- Under 180 days: demand itemization under 49 CFR 373.103, then test the charge on merits and on authorization.
- Already paid: file a written overcharge claim with the freight bill, the authority relied on, and payment information, and expect a decision within 60 days under 49 CFR 378.8.
- Check your own contest window on the new bill and calendar it.
- Fix intake so the receipt date is captured as data on every freight bill, then age flagged rebills against it.
The 180-day argument is unusual among freight disputes because it does not depend on who is right about the freight. It depends on two dates you either recorded or did not. Record them.
Sources
- 49 U.S.C. 13710, billing of additional charges and the contest window (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 373.103, contents of a freight or expense bill (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.2, definitions of overcharge, duplicate payment and overcollection (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.4, documentation required with an overcharge claim (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.5, carrier duty to investigate on receipt of a claim (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.8, sixty-day resolution of written overcharge claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.9, carrier-discovered overpayments and the thirty-day refund (Cornell LII)