What Is TONU (Truck Ordered Not Used)? Fees, Who Pays and How Shippers Avoid It

What does TONU mean in trucking?

TONU means the carrier reserved a truck and a driver for your load and never got to haul it. DAT describes it as a fee carriers charge when a truck is ordered but not used, to compensate for the earnings lost during that time.^[1] The truck may have driven empty to your site, or it may only have been held back from other freight.

On an invoice it is an accessorial charge, meaning a line billed separately from the linehaul rate (the price of the haul itself). With a TONU there is no linehaul at all: the fee is the whole invoice. Some carriers list it under longer names, such as "vehicle requested but not used" (Schneider) or "equipment ordered not used" (J.B. Hunt).

When can a carrier charge a TONU fee?

A carrier can charge a TONU when its tariff or your contract provides for it and one of three things happens. Published tariffs describe the triggers in similar terms:

• Late cancellation. You cancel inside the notice window. Twenty-four hours before the scheduled pickup is the most common cut-off in the terms we checked; some use 8 or 6 hours.^[2][3][4]
• Truck arrives but cannot be loaded. The truck arrives and cannot be loaded through no fault of the carrier: the order is not picked, the product is on quality hold or the dock turns the driver away.
• Freight never tendered. A pickup was requested and nothing was handed over. CFI's tariff covers both of the last two cases in one sentence: equipment "furnished but not used, through no fault of Carrier", or a shipper that "fails to tender a shipment for transportation".^[3]

Some terms add a condition that works in your favor. ArcBest's booking terms charge the fee only once a driver has been dispatched and the cancellation falls within 24 hours of the scheduled pickup time.^[6] Union Pacific, which pays truckers as a customer, writes the same logic into its supplier terms. It accepts a TONU when the driver arrives on site and is told the load is not ready or cancelled, and refuses one when the shipper gave 24 hours' notice of the cancellation.^[7]

How much is a TONU fee?

A truckload TONU is a flat $350 to $400 per truck in the tariffs we checked, and $600 for temperature-controlled freight. J.B. Hunt's quick rate terms bill per mile instead, with a $250 minimum. The table shows what four carriers' public terms said when we checked them in November 2026.

Your contract overrides these numbers. A tariff is the carrier's default. A negotiated agreement or the rate confirmation for a specific load can set a different amount, a different cut-off or no TONU at all.

Lower figures are still widely quoted. Anderson Trucking Service (ATS) wrote in 2023 that most TONU fees run $150 to $300 per truck, and at least $500 for a specialized load.^[8] A 2014 Transplace benchmark covering more than 150 shippers found that 64% applied a TONU charge in their freight terms, most often $250 (43% of them) or $150 (39%).^[9] The truckload tariffs in the table sit above both, so for a full truckload budget closer to $350. Drayage schedules go lower: Union Pacific's supplier schedule lists $100 for a cancelled load.^[7]

Can other charges be added on top of a TONU?

Yes. CFI's tariff says detention charges apply to equipment that was ordered but not used. It also says that when the customer has asked the carrier to deadhead a truck to the loading point and the load is cancelled after dispatch, the deadhead charge ($1.75 per mile for dry van and $2.00 for temperature-controlled, plus fuel surcharge) applies in addition to the TONU.^[3]

Take those published rates. You ask the carrier to bring a refrigerated truck 80 empty miles to your dock, then cancel after it has been dispatched. The TONU is $600 and the deadhead is 80 × $2.00 = $160. That is $760 before fuel surcharge, for a truck that hauled nothing.

Who pays the TONU fee: the shipper, the broker or the receiver?

The party responsible for the freight charges pays. ATS defines TONU as a fee levied "on the party responsible for paying the freight charges",^[8] which in practice is whoever booked the truck.

For a warehouse, that plays out in three ways:

• You booked the carrier directly. The carrier bills you. This is the usual case for outbound freight you pay for.
• You booked through a broker. The carrier bills the broker, because the broker is its customer. The broker then passes the charge on to you if your agreement with the broker allows it.
• Your supplier or customer booked the truck. They get the invoice. If the cancellation was your doing (your dock turned the truck away, or the order was not staged for a customer pickup), expect them to ask you for the money. This is where a receiver usually stands on inbound freight.

When a broker passes a TONU on, you can ask to see the broker's record of the transaction. Federal rules require brokers to keep one, showing the freight charges the broker collected and its own compensation, and give each party to a brokered transaction the right to review it.^[11] The same goes for who pays a lumper fee: paperwork written before the truck was booked settles it, so read the accessorial lines before you tender the load.

What is the difference between TONU, detention, layover and deadhead?

TONU is charged when the load never moves. Detention and layover are charged when it moves late, and deadhead is charged for the empty miles driven to reach you. All four pay the carrier for time or distance that earned no linehaul.

The practical difference for a warehouse is timing. Detention grows by the hour while a truck sits at your dock, so you can still limit it. A TONU is fixed the moment you cancel inside the window. For the hourly side, see how truck detention is calculated and billed.

Is TONU regulated by law or set by contract?

TONU is set by contract. We found no federal rule that fixes a TONU amount or a notice period. Federal law lets a carrier contract with a shipper to provide "specified services under specified rates and conditions",^[10] and TONU is one of those conditions. It lives in the carrier's rules tariff, your transportation contract or the rate confirmation for the load.

On every rate confirmation or carrier agreement, look for the TONU amount, the cut-off (how many hours before pickup you can cancel for free) and whether deadhead or detention can be added. If the pickup is a first-come, first-served window and not a fixed appointment, also ask which time the cut-off counts back from. Our guide to FCFS windows vs appointment scheduling explains why the two behave differently.

This section describes US law in general terms. It is not legal advice for a specific dispute.

Why do loads get cancelled at the last minute?

Most last-minute cancellations start inside the shipper's own building, hours before anyone tells the carrier. In our experience the usual causes are:

• The order is not ready. Production ran late, the pick is not finished or the product is on quality hold, and nobody told the person who booked the truck.
• The order changed. The customer cut the quantity or pushed the delivery date, so the truck on its way is the wrong size or coming on the wrong day.
• The truck was booked twice. Two planners, or a planner and a broker, each ordered a truck for the same load.
• The dock cannot take it. The door is occupied, the shift is short-staffed, or the appointment was moved and the carrier never heard about it.

In most of these cases somebody in the building knew before the cut-off. The fee is charged because that knowledge reached the carrier too late.

How do shippers and warehouses avoid TONU charges?

You avoid TONU by cancelling or rescheduling before the carrier's cut-off, and by knowing early enough that a load is in trouble. Six habits cover most of it:

1. Know each carrier's cut-off. It is 24 hours in most of the published terms we checked and 6 or 8 hours in some. Put the number where the people who book trucks can see it.
2. Confirm the freight is ready before the cut-off. A daily check of tomorrow's pickups against production and picking status is enough. If a load is in doubt 24 hours out, that is the moment to decide, not the morning of the pickup.
3. Reschedule before you cancel. CFI's tariff waives the TONU when the customer offers a comparable load.^[3] Ask the carrier whether a new pickup time or another load settles it before you cancel outright.
4. Cancel in writing, with a time on it. A phone call leaves no proof that you were outside the window. An email or a cancelled booking with a timestamp does.
5. Give exact load details when you book. A dry van sent for a load that needs a refrigerated trailer is a truck you cannot use, and the fee is the same as for a cancellation.
6. Keep the carrier and the dock on one schedule. If the dock moves an appointment, the carrier has to see the change. A truck that arrives for a slot that no longer exists ends in a TONU or a detention bill.

A shared dock calendar makes two of these habits routine: the readiness check, and keeping the carrier and the dock on one schedule. When pickups are booked as appointments, tomorrow's trucks are one list you can check against what is ready. In LoadingCalendar, carriers book through a carrier booking portal and can cancel their own bookings there. Status changes are logged with the time and the person who made them, which is the record you want when a TONU is disputed. LoadingCalendar costs $99 a month flat, with a 14-day trial and no card required.

Two related guides. How to track no-show rate and set a cancellation cut-off covers the same rule from the warehouse side. How to reduce detention fees at your warehouse matters here too, because unready loads cause both charges.

How do you check whether a TONU invoice is valid?

Start with three facts: a pickup was requested, a truck came to make it and no freight was picked up. That is the check the freight audit firm Universal Traffic Service says it applies to every TONU, after finding that a significant number of the TONU invoices it reviewed were not valid.^[12] Under late-cancellation terms the truck need not have arrived, and there the cut-off is what counts.

Then check the terms. Was the cancellation inside the cut-off? Is the amount the one in the tariff or the rate confirmation? If deadhead miles are billed, from where? Your own timestamps (when the pickup was booked, when it was cancelled, whether a driver checked in at the gate) settle most of these questions in one email.