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Freight glossary.

92 terms and acronyms, in plain language. Written for someone new to freight — not for people who already know. Where a term shows up in a TMS, there is a link straight to the step that demonstrates it.

Common acronyms

3PLThird-party logistics: A company that arranges and manages freight on a shipper's behalf without owning the trucks.
ACHAutomated Clearing House: Bank-to-bank electronic payment. ACH details are commonly printed on the invoice under payment instructions.
API: The connection one system uses to talk to another. Carrier rating, tendering, tracking and document retrieval all happen over APIs.
CFTCubic feet: The volume the freight occupies. Combined with weight it gives density, which drives class.
CODCollect on Delivery: The carrier collects payment from the receiver before releasing the freight, then remits it.
DIM weightDimensional weight: Billing on the space freight occupies rather than what it weighs. Light and bulky ships at its dimensional weight, not its scale weight.
EDIElectronic Data Interchange: The older standard for exchanging freight documents between systems. Numbered by document type — 204 is a tender, 210 an invoice, 214 a status update.
FTLFull truckload: Another way of saying truckload — one shipment filling one trailer, running direct.
GL codeGeneral Ledger: The accounting bucket a customer wants freight cost charged to. Carried as a reference field so it lands on reporting.
OS&DOver, Short and Damaged: The exception report when what arrived does not match what shipped: extra pieces, missing pieces, or damage.
PO numberPurchase Order: The buyer's order number. Carried on the load as a reference field so the receiver can match the delivery to what they ordered.
QBOQuickBooks Online: The accounting system Providence can push invoices to, and the source of the payment link behind prepaid booking.
SCACStandard Carrier Alpha Code: The two-to-four letter code identifying a carrier — ODFL, EXLA, SAIA. What systems use instead of the carrier's trading name.
SO numberSales Order: The seller's order number for the same transaction, carried as a reference field.
TMSTransportation Management System: The software freight runs on: quoting, booking, tracking, documents and settlement in one place. Providence is a TMS.

Who's who

Broker3PL: A company that arranges freight without owning trucks. It buys transportation from carriers and resells it to shippers, and the difference is its margin.
Carrier: The trucking company that physically moves the shipment. Estes, XPO, Old Dominion and SAIA are all carriers.
Consignee: The party receiving the freight. The destination on the load.
Managing Provider: The party who runs the platform day to day for a set of companies and resells it to them. A managing provider can see the buy and sell of the companies it manages.
Market Partner: A party that brings its own carrier contracts to the table and sells that pricing down the chain. It sees rates from its own contracts and nothing below it.
Pricing owner: Whoever owns the contract a given rate came from. It determines who is allowed to see the buy rate and the margin on that rate line.
Provider Group: Providence's top-level grouping. Every company belongs to one, and it decides who can see that customer's freight and financials.Creating a company
Shipper: The party whose freight it is. On a load they are usually the origin — the dock the truck collects from.

Setting up a customer

Bill To: Who receives the invoice, when that is not the shipping location — typically corporate rather than the plant. A location cannot be rated without one.Default Bill To
Company: A customer as a whole — the name that appears on invoices and in search. Everything else about them hangs underneath it.Creating a company
Contract: A carrier agreement holding the rates, accessorial charges and rules used to price freight. A location returns no rates until at least one contract points at it.Attaching contracts
Default Load Address: The origin details that drop onto every new quote for a location: address, contact, dock hours and arrival rules. It is what makes self-service quoting workable.Default Load Addresses
Default Load Item: A commodity a location ships often, saved so it appears ready-made on new quotes with its class, weight and dimensions already set.Default Load Items
Division: A business unit inside a company: a brand, a region, a plant group, a separate P&L. Every company has at least one even when it only needs one.Adding a division
Location: A physical ship-from site. Locations — not companies — carry the settings, because a customer with three plants needs three sets of defaults.Adding a location
Reference field: A customer's own number carried on the load — PO number, BOL number, account number, GL code, job number. Activated per location, reportable, and optionally required or pre-filled.Reference Fields

Describing the freight

DensityPCF: Pounds per cubic foot. Weight divided by the space the freight occupies, and for most commodities the number that drives the class.Density on a quote
Freight classNMFC class: A number from 50 to 500 that determines how expensive LTL freight is to haul. Dense, sturdy, easily-stacked goods get a low class and a lower rate.Class on a quote
Handling unit: What the carrier physically moves — a pallet, a crate, a drum. Distinct from piece count: 40 cartons on one pallet is one handling unit.
Hazmat: Hazardous materials. Requires specific paperwork, carrier authority and emergency contact details, and not every carrier will take it.
Linear feet: How much trailer length the freight consumes. Past roughly 12–14 feet many carriers stop treating it as standard LTL and require a volume quote instead.Where it bites
NMFC: The National Motor Freight Classification — the code book that says which class a given commodity belongs to. An NMFC number identifies the specific commodity listing.Class is not NMFC
Reclass: The carrier inspected the freight and decided it belongs in a different class than the one quoted. A common and expensive source of invoice variance.Disputing a correction
Reweigh: The carrier weighed the shipment and it did not match the BOL. The invoice is corrected to the weight they found, usually upward.Disputing a correction
W&IWeight and Inspection certificate: The carrier's evidence behind a reweigh or reclass — what they measured and photographed. The first document to open when a correction lands.Documents on a load

Modes and service

Final mileWhite glove: Delivery beyond the dock — into a room, unpacked, debris removed. Residential deliveries with a lift gate and inside placement fall here.
Guaranteed: A delivery commitment backed by the carrier, usually with the freight charge refunded if they miss. Costs more than standard.
LTLLess than truckload: Freight that does not fill a trailer, moved on a shared truck through carrier terminals. Priced by class, weight and distance.What LTL actually is
Parcel: Small packages moved by carriers like FedEx and UPS, priced by package rather than by class.
Service level: How fast and under what commitment: Standard, Guaranteed, Volume, Expedite, Final Mile. Each is priced separately and can carry its own markup.Choosing service levels
TruckloadTL / FTL: A whole trailer dedicated to one shipment, running direct from origin to destination. Priced per mile rather than by class.
Volume LTL: Freight too large for standard LTL but short of a full truckload. Quoted case by case rather than off the standard tariff.When volume beats standard LTL

Pricing

Accessorial: A charge for anything beyond dock-to-dock: lift gate, inside delivery, residential, limited access, detention, sort and segregate, reconsignment.
Base rate: The line-haul charge before fuel and accessorials — the cost of moving the freight itself.How an LTL price is built
Buy rate: What a given party pays for the freight — their own cost, from whoever sold it to them. Only the party actually holding the carrier contract buys from the carrier; everyone further down buys from the tier above them.Buy, sell and whose margin
FAKFreight all kinds: A contract term that treats a range of classes as one agreed class, so a shipper with mixed freight gets a single predictable rate.FAK, and when it costs you
Fuel surchargeFSC: A separate charge that floats with diesel prices, usually a percentage of the base rate, updated weekly against a published index.How an LTL price is built
Margin: Sell minus buy for one party at one tier — not a single number for the whole load. Who may see it is governed strictly: nobody sees what the tier above them makes off them.What healthy margin looks like
Markup: The rule that turns a buy rate into a sell rate — a flat amount, a percentage, or both, optionally held between a floor and a ceiling.Building a markup
Mileage: The routed distance between origin and destination, shown alongside rate results and used in per-mile pricing.
Rate stackMarkup cascade: Rates resell downward — carrier, then whoever holds that contract, then whoever resells it, and so on to the shipper. Each tier adds its own markup, so buy and sell only mean anything once you say whose buy and whose sell.
Sell rate: What that same party charges the next party down. One party's sell is the next party's buy, which is why a single load carries several buy/sell pairs rather than one.Buy, sell and whose margin
Spot quote: A one-off price for a specific shipment rather than one calculated from a standing contract.
Tariff: The carrier's published rules and charges — what they bill for and how they calculate it. A contract's accessorial pricing is read out of the tariff.

Quoting and booking

Blind shipment: A shipment where one party is deliberately not told who the other is — typically so a reseller's customer never learns the supplier.
Booking: Committing the quote at a chosen carrier's rate. In Providence this also tenders the shipment to that carrier automatically.Booking a carrier
Dispatch: The carrier assigning the pickup to a driver and terminal. Manual dispatch means phoning or emailing it in because the API did not take it.
ETA: The carrier's estimated delivery date. It moves as the shipment moves, and the original estimate is kept alongside the current one.
Expected ship date: The day the freight is available for collection. Carriers price by date, so a quote for tomorrow and one for next week are different numbers.Setting the ship date
LoadShipment: What a quote becomes once booked: a real shipment with a carrier, a rate, documents and a status.The quote becomes a load
MABDMust arrive by date: A receiver's deadline. Arriving after it can mean refusal or a chargeback, and arriving early can be just as unwelcome.
Quote: A priced but uncommitted shipment. Nothing is owed and no truck is ordered until it is booked.Starting a quote
Tender: Formally offering the shipment to the carrier so they schedule a pickup. A booked load whose tender failed is a load nobody is coming for.When a tender fails
TONUTruck ordered not used: A fee for ordering a truck and then not loading it. The carrier still sent a driver.

Paperwork

BOLBill of Lading: The contract of carriage and the document that travels with the freight. It states what is shipping, from where, to whom, and under whose terms.Documents on a load
FCFSFirst come first served: The dock takes trucks in the order they arrive, no appointment needed. The alternative is an appointment or advance notification, which changes what the carrier quotes.
Pickup number: The carrier's reference for the collection itself, quoted when chasing a truck that has not arrived.
PODProof of Delivery: The signed delivery receipt. It is what you invoice against, and what you produce when a delivery is disputed.What the delivery receipt decides
PRO number: The carrier's own tracking number for the shipment. It comes back from the carrier after dispatch rather than being typed in.
Shipper BOL: The BOL you generate and send to the dock before pickup, so the driver has paperwork to collect against.
Signed BOL: The BOL after the driver has signed for the freight — evidence of what was actually handed over.

Tracking and exceptions

Audit exception: Something went wrong with the money: an accessorial appeared, a rate changed, a reweigh or reclass landed, an invoice did not match.
Check call: Asking a carrier where the freight is. Automated tracking replaces most of them.
Integration exception: A system-to-system call failed — a rating request, a tender, a document fetch.
Load historyAudit trail: Every change to a load with who made it and when, including actions taken by the system itself.The audit trail
Service exception: Something went wrong with the freight: late, damaged, lost, refused, missed pickup, reconsigned.
Tracking log: The timestamped record of carrier status updates on a load, polled automatically while tracking is enabled.Tracking a load

Money in and out

APAccounts payable: Money you owe the carrier. The rules that decide when a carrier invoice is clear to pay.AP settings
ARAccounts receivable: Money owed to you by the customer. In Providence, the rules that decide when a load is ready to invoice, what the invoice says, and how it is delivered.AR settings
Days delivered before invoice: A deliberate hold between delivery and billing, so late accessorials land before the invoice goes out rather than after.
EDI 210: The electronic freight invoice a carrier sends. It can arrive before the shipment is even marked delivered, which is why invoicing is often held a few days.
Invoice match tolerance: The dollar gap you are willing to absorb between what you were quoted and what the carrier billed, before it becomes an exception.
Invoice mode: How invoices are issued: Transactional is one per load, Bulk batches them, Prepaid means the freight cannot be booked until it is paid.Invoice delivery
Ready to Invoice: A load that meets the conditions for billing the customer, including any deliberate delay after delivery.
Ready to Pay: A carrier invoice that satisfies every condition you set — within tolerance, delivered, documents present, references filled — and so can be paid without review.
Remit to: Where the customer should send payment. Printed on the invoice, alongside ACH details if you publish them.
Voucher: The payment instruction produced inside the TMS for a carrier invoice. Not needed if your AP team pays out of Sage, QuickBooks or NetSuite instead.

Missing a term, or one of these does not match how your team uses it? Tell us and we will fix it — the vocabulary should match the yard, not the other way round.

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