The cash stuck in your paperwork

If you run a freight desk, you already know the load doesn't pay you when it delivers. It pays you when the invoice clears, and lately that's taking longer than it should.

Part of it is the market. Shippers have been stretching terms for a while now, pushing from net-30 and net-45 out to net-60, net-90, and in some cases net-120. Carriers and brokers are waiting 45 to 90 days or more for money they earned weeks ago. You can't always control the terms. But you can control how fast your side of the paperwork is ready, and that's where I see the most cash left on the table.

Here's what I learned the hard way:

The clock starts at the POD, not the delivery. Every day you spend chasing a signed proof of delivery is a day added to a payment cycle that's already too long. The desks that get paid fast are the ones that have the POD in hand before the driver's out of the lot.

A clean invoice is a fast invoice. A missing reference number, a wrong accessorial, a mismatched rate: any one of them kicks your bill to the bottom of someone's pile. The rework is what kills you, not the terms.

Follow-up is the whole game. An invoice sent and never chased just sits. The money goes to whoever politely, persistently asks for it.

None of that is judgment work. It's the repetitive, every-load discipline that slips first when the desk is slammed. That's exactly what I've been handing to an AI teammate: it chases the POD, assembles the packet clean, and follows up on what's outstanding, so the days-to-cash come down without another seat. You still own every number.

So heading into the back half of the year: how many days does it actually take you to turn a delivered load into money in the bank, and how much of that is the terms versus your own paperwork?

Dallas Wymes, Silk Road SCM

Freight, Trucking, Freight Brokers, Cash Flow, Logistics

Originally published in The Dispatch on LinkedIn.