How It Works
Kargo's 3-Step Guide to Refuting a Freight Claim
| Kargo | 5 min
Every day, thousands of trailers arrive and depart distribution centers carrying billions of dollars of inventory. With multiple checkpoints on the line, there are a lot of ways your operation can lose revenue. Freight claims are the most time-consuming.
Freight claims are a significant source of cost for manufacturers, shippers, and logistics providers. Shortages, damages, and shipping discrepancies can result in deductions that are difficult to challenge without clear evidence.
Kargo helps companies simplify the claims process by automatically capturing shipment data, images, and video as freight moves through the warehouse.
The process is straightforward:
Search the shipment. Refute the claim. Receive payment.
What are Freight Claims?
A freight claim is a request for financial compensation related to goods that are lost, damaged, short, or otherwise disputed during transportation.
Common freight claims include:
- Shortages
- Damaged product
- Missing pallets or cases
- Incorrect products
- Labeling discrepancies
- Other overage, shortage, and damage (OS&D) issues
When a claim is submitted, the shipper must determine whether the issue occurred before or after the freight left its facility.
This can be difficult when the available evidence consists only of transaction records, bills of lading, or manual photographs.
Kargo provides the silver bullet by automatically capturing the physical condition and identity of freight as it moves through the operation.
Why Video and Picture Evidence Is Important for Freight Claims
Traditional shipping records document transactions. Video documents the physical freight.
A WMS may show that a pallet was scanned. A bill of lading may indicate the expected pallet count. A proof of delivery may confirm receipt.
These records do not always establish:
- Whether a specific pallet was physically loaded
- What product was on the pallet
- What condition the freight was in at the time of shipment
- Whether visible damage existed before the freight left the facility
Video evidence provides a direct record of these events.
Kargo automatically associates visual evidence with shipment data, making it possible to retrieve the relevant images and video when a claim is received.
This creates a stronger evidence package and reduces the time required to investigate claims.
Step 1: Search for the Shipment
A claim will typically contain one or more shipment identifiers.
This may include a:
- PO number
- LPN
- SKU
- Lot or batch code
- Shipment number
- Trailer
- Carrier
- Date or timestamp
Kargo makes these data elements searchable.
A user can enter information from the claim and retrieve the associated shipment record, including the relevant images, video, label data, and timestamps.
The searchability eliminates the need to manually search across multiple systems or locate photographs stored separately from shipment data.
The objective is simple: use any known data element from the claim to find the physical shipment.
Step 2: Refute in one-click
Once the relevant shipment has been identified, the supporting evidence needs to be provided to the customer.
Kargo makes shipment records easily shareable.
Users can create a public share link containing the specific evidence required to address the claim, including:
- Video
- Images
- Shipment data
- Label information
- PO and carrier details
- Relevant timestamps
The customer can review the evidence without requiring access to Kargo or the shipper’s internal systems.
This creates a clear and consistent way to respond to claims.
For example, a shipper can provide evidence showing that:
- The disputed pallet was loaded
- The correct SKU was shipped
- The expected quantity was present
- The freight was in good condition when it left the facility
The claim can be addressed with a single, shareable record rather than a collection of attachments and supporting documents.
Step 3: Get your money back
The purpose of the claims process is financial recovery.
When a claim is invalid, the desired outcome is not simply to document the shipment. It is to reverse the deduction and recover the associated cash.
Manual claim investigations can make smaller claims uneconomical to dispute. If employees must spend hours locating evidence and coordinating with customers, companies may choose to accept deductions that could otherwise be refuted.
Kargo reduces the effort required to investigate and respond to a claim.
The workflow becomes:
Search the shipment.
Share the evidence.
Refute the claim.
Recover the payment.
By making shipment evidence searchable and immediately shareable, Kargo helps claims and operations teams move more quickly from dispute to resolution.
A More Efficient Way to Manage Freight Claims
Effective freight claims management depends on having reliable evidence available when a dispute occurs.
Kargo automatically creates that evidence during normal warehouse operations.
There is no need to reconstruct a shipment after a claim has been received. The relevant data, images, and video are already associated with the shipment and available for review.
For companies dealing with retailer claims, freight damage claims, and OS&D deductions, this provides a more efficient way to investigate disputes, demonstrate what occurred, and recover invalid deductions.
Search. Refute. Receive payment.
See How Kargo Helps Refute Freight Claims
Learn how Kargo automatically captures and organizes the shipment evidence your team needs to investigate and refute freight claims.
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