Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the transportation and logistics terms that come up in every freight conversation — from TL, LTL, and ETA to EDI 204/214, hours of service, and OTIF. Search by term or description.
40 terms, A–Z
3PL (Third-Party Logistics Provider)
A company that runs outsourced logistics functions for shippers — freight brokerage, managed transportation, warehousing, and fulfillment — sitting between the shipper and the carriers who move the freight.
Accessorial Charges
Fees for services beyond basic dock-to-dock linehaul — detention, liftgate, lumper, residential delivery, redelivery — added to a freight invoice on top of the base rate.
API Integration
Connecting two systems through a defined set of programmatic endpoints, allowing near-real-time data exchange rather than batch file transfer.
BOL (Bill of Lading)
The legal shipping document issued at pickup that serves as the contract of carriage, the receipt for the freight, and the description of what is being moved.
Carrier Compliance
Ongoing verification that a carrier maintains valid operating authority, insurance, and safety ratings required to legally haul freight.
Carrier Onboarding
The process of vetting, qualifying, and setting up a new carrier to haul freight — authority checks, insurance verification, EDI/API setup, and compliance documentation.
Check Call
A phone call made solely to learn or relay the status of a load — customer to carrier, dispatcher to driver, or broker to both — because no automated status source exists or is trusted.
Deadhead
Miles a truck runs empty — typically repositioning from a delivery to the next pickup — burning fuel, driver hours, and equipment time while earning nothing.
Detention
Time a carrier's driver and equipment are held beyond the agreed free time at a shipper or receiver's facility, typically billed at an hourly rate.
Digital Freight Matching
Software that automatically pairs available loads with available capacity, reducing reliance on manual load-board searching and phone-based booking.
Double Brokering
A freight fraud pattern where the party that books a load re-brokers it to another carrier without authorization — breaking the chain of liability, payment, and accountability for the freight.
Drayage
Short-haul trucking that moves containers between ports or rail ramps and nearby warehouses, yards, and customers — the truck legs at each end of an intermodal or ocean move.
Dwell Time
The time a truck spends at a facility between arrival and departure — loading, unloading, or waiting — and one of the strongest predictors of downstream lateness.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
A standardized format for exchanging business documents — load tenders, invoices, status updates — directly between two companies' systems without manual re-entry.
EDI 204 (Load Tender)
The EDI transaction set used to electronically offer a shipment to a carrier, specifying pickup/delivery locations, equipment, and commodity details.
EDI 210 (Motor Carrier Freight Invoice)
The EDI transaction set used to electronically invoice a shipper or broker for a completed shipment.
EDI 214 (Shipment Status Message)
The EDI transaction set carriers use to report shipment milestones — pickup, in-transit, delivery — back to the shipper or broker.
EDI 990 (Response to Load Tender)
The EDI transaction set a carrier sends back to accept or decline a load tender (EDI 204).
ELD (Electronic Logging Device)
A device that automatically records a commercial driver's hours of service, required by FMCSA regulation for most interstate carriers.
ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival)
The projected date and time a shipment will arrive at its next stop — the number every status update, appointment, and service metric in freight ultimately keys off.
Exception Management
An operating model where systems handle routine shipments automatically and people work only the loads flagged as needing intervention — at risk, delayed, or off plan.
Freight Broker
A licensed intermediary that arranges transportation between shippers and motor carriers without operating trucks itself, earning the spread between the shipper rate and the carrier buy rate.
Freight Visibility Platform
A system that aggregates location and status data from telematics, ELDs, and carrier systems to give shippers and brokers a single view of in-transit freight.
FTL / TL (Full Truckload)
Freight that fills — or contractually books — an entire trailer for one shipper, moving directly from pickup to delivery without intermediate handling.
Geofencing
Using a virtual geographic boundary to automatically trigger status updates — such as arrival or departure — when a tracked vehicle crosses it.
HOS (Hours of Service)
Federal limits on how long a commercial driver may drive and be on duty — recorded by ELDs and a decisive input to whether a load can legally make its appointment.
Intermodal
Freight that moves in one container or trailer across multiple transportation modes — most commonly truck to rail and back to truck — without the freight itself being rehandled.
LTL (Less-Than-Truckload)
Freight too small to fill a trailer, consolidated with other shippers' freight and moved through a hub-and-spoke terminal network, priced by weight, class, and distance.
MC Number (Motor Carrier Number)
A unique identifier the FMCSA assigns to a carrier authorized to transport regulated commodities or passengers across state lines.
Middleware (Integration Middleware)
Software that sits between two or more systems, translating and routing data so they can exchange information without a direct, custom-built connection.
OTIF (On-Time In-Full)
A shipper service metric scoring whether a delivery arrived within its appointment window with the complete ordered quantity — often enforced with per-failure chargebacks.
POD (Proof of Delivery)
The signed confirmation — typically the delivery-signed bill of lading or an electronic signature capture — that freight was received, when, and in what condition.
Predictive ETA
An arrival estimate computed from the operational context around a load — driver hours of service, traffic, facility dwell history, and appointment windows — not just the truck's current position and remaining distance.
Routing Guide
A shipper's ranked list of contracted carriers for each lane — the order in which tenders are offered, at what rates, before freight falls to backups or the spot market.
Spot Rate
The price to move a single load booked on the open market right now, as opposed to a contract rate negotiated in advance for a lane over a bid cycle.
Telematics
Systems that capture and transmit vehicle data — location, engine diagnostics, driver behavior — typically via GPS and onboard hardware.
Tender
A formal offer of a load from a shipper or broker to a carrier, typically sent via EDI 204 or through a TMS/portal, which the carrier accepts or rejects.
TMS (Transportation Management System)
Software carriers, brokers, and shippers use to plan, execute, and track freight movement — dispatch, routing, settlement, and customer communication.
VAN (Value-Added Network)
A third-party network that routes and translates EDI messages between trading partners, typically charging per-transaction or subscription fees.
Webhook
An automated, event-triggered HTTP callback that pushes data from one system to another as soon as something happens, instead of the receiving system having to poll for updates.