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Free Bill of Lading Form

Bill of lading form

A bill of lading is the receipt and the contract a carrier signs when it takes your freight. Fill the form in below (shipper, consignee and the freight itself) and download a print-ready PDF. Free, no signup, and nothing you type is uploaded unless you sign in to save it. If you would rather write it out by hand, take a blank bill of lading instead.

Bill of lading

Standard short form. Required fields are marked; the rest print blank if you leave them.

Document
Ship from — shipper
Ship to — consignee
Carrier

Four-letter carrier code.

Freight

One line per commodity. Weight and description are what a carrier checks first, and a missing NMFC class is the usual reason an invoice comes back higher than the quote.

Line 1
Charges, value and terms

Leave blank and the carrier's tariff cap applies.

Non-recourse: the carrier collects from the consignee only.

Special instructions

Required on the shipping paper whenever hazmat is aboard. It must be answered by someone who knows the load.

Everything stays in this browser tab. Nothing you type is uploaded, and no account is needed.

What this does and does not do

What comes out is a standard short-form straight bill of lading, the layout most LTL and truckload carriers work from every day. It is not a carrier-branded form. Some carriers, some retail distribution networks and any lane running on EDI will want their own document or a tendered shipment instead. It also does not rate your freight, look up NMFC item numbers or talk to a carrier's system. You fill it in, it prints. Because it is a generic bill of lading for trucking, the carrier is just another field on it, so the same form works for any carrier that takes a standard short-form BOL. Carriers that publish their own form are covered in the FedEx, XPO, Estes and Old Dominion bill of lading guides.

What a bill of lading is, in three sentences

It is a receipt: the carrier signs to say it took this freight, in this condition, on this date. It is a contract of carriage: the terms printed on the face bind the shipper and the carrier for the length of the haul. And on a negotiable bill it is a document of title, which means whoever holds the paper controls who gets the goods.

Those three jobs are why a scribbled note on a packing slip will not do. When something goes wrong (a shortage, a crushed pallet, an invoice for double the quote), the bill of lading is the first document anyone asks for, and the second is the signed delivery receipt. If you want the long version, the legal background is set out here.

Which bill of lading form fits your shipment

For ordinary domestic freight moving by truck to a named business, the short form on this page is the right one. It covers most LTL and truckload pickups. The table sends the exceptions to the document built for them.

Which bill of lading to use for each type of shipment
Your shipmentUseWhy
LTL or truckload to a named business The form on this page Short-form straight BOL, and the layout carriers read all day.
Retail distribution center with a routing guide VICS layout on the template page Lists each purchase order, which is what receiving reconciles against.
You want a copy to complete with a pen Blank bill of lading Prints empty, for shipments booked at the dock.
Forwarded or consolidated international freight House bill of lading Carries ports, vessel and notify party, which a trucking BOL does not.
Goods sold in transit, or paid by letter of credit Original bill of lading A negotiable original controls who may collect the goods.
A carrier that publishes its own form FedEx, XPO, Estes, Old Dominion Each guide says what that carrier expects on the document.

Every freight document, in one place

The bill of lading is the one everybody needs. The rest of the paperwork around a load (the lumper receipt, the POD, the invoice you send the broker) works the same way: fill it in on screen and download a print-ready PDF.

Why another bill of lading form

Search for a BOL form and you mostly get two kinds of result. The first is a flat PDF you download, print, and then fill in by hand at a desk with a pen: fine if you ship one pallet a month, awful if you are doing four a day and the shipper block never changes. The second is a template behind a signup wall, where the price of a piece of paper is your email address and, on some sites, your shipment details sitting on somebody else's server.

This is the third option. Type into a real form, get a real PDF, and keep the data on your own machine. The generation happens in JavaScript in your browser, with no server-side step and no signup, which is not a privacy slogan so much as an architectural fact. Used this way there is no store of shipment data here to leak, because none is created. If you came looking for a fillable bill of lading PDF, this does the same job in the browser, and what you download is a free printable bill of lading form with your entries already typed in.

Why it is built this way is a longer answer, but the trade-off is honest enough to state plainly: nothing is saved between visits, so if you ship to the same twelve consignees every week you retype them every week. That is exactly what a free company account is for: it keeps saved parties, a document history and sequential numbering. It is opt-in, it costs nothing, and the generators above never stop working without it.

The four fields that cause trouble

Most BOL errors are harmless. Four are not, and they are the ones that turn a routine claim into a denied claim or a quoted rate into a rebill.

Each of those has a field on the form above, and the field-by-field walkthrough explains what a carrier actually looks at when it reads them.

How the bill of lading generator works

  1. Fill in the shipper and consignee blocks. City and state are required on both; the rest print blank if you skip them.
  2. Name the carrier. Add the SCAC, trailer and seal numbers if you have them at the dock.
  3. Add a freight line for each commodity: handling units, description, NMFC number, class and weight. Tick the hazmat box on any line that needs it.
  4. Set the declared value if the freight is worth more than the tariff cap, and mark the freight terms as prepaid, collect or third party.
  5. Hit Download PDF. Print three copies: driver, consignee, your file.

Prefer paper the whole way? The Print button renders the same document through your browser's print dialog, no download step. And if you land here with JavaScript switched off, printing this page still gives you a ruled blank BOL you can complete by hand.

Common questions

Is this bill of lading generator really free?

Yes. Every generator is free, with no trial and no watermark. The form runs in your browser and the PDF is built on your own device. A free account adds saved addresses, document history and sequential numbering for companies that want them, and it is optional: nothing behind it is needed to produce a document.

Do I need to sign up or give an email address?

No. Signed out, nothing you type is sent anywhere: close the tab and the shipment details are gone, which also means we cannot recover a BOL for you later, so save the PDF when you download it. Signing in is only for the optional free account, where documents are deliberately kept so you can reopen them.

Will my carrier accept a bill of lading I generated here?

Most LTL and truckload carriers accept a standard short-form BOL, and that is what this produces. Some carriers and several retail distribution networks require their own branded form or an EDI tender. Ask your carrier before the truck shows up, not after.

How many copies of a bill of lading do I need?

Three is the working answer: one for the driver, one for the consignee, one you keep. Print the PDF three times. If the freight is moving on an order bill of lading rather than a straight BOL, the original set matters legally and the consignee must surrender an original to take delivery.

What is the difference between a BOL number and a PRO number?

You create the BOL number; the carrier creates the PRO number. The BOL number is your reference for the shipment and can be anything you like, including a purchase order. The PRO is the carrier's tracking number, usually printed on a barcode label the driver applies at pickup. Both end up on the freight invoice.

What happens if I leave the declared value blank?

The carrier's tariff limitation of liability applies instead, and that is usually a released value measured in dollars per pound rather than what the freight is actually worth. On a pallet of electronics the difference between the two numbers can be thousands of dollars. Declare the value when the freight is worth more than the tariff cap.

Can I use this on my phone in the truck?

Yes. The form is built for a 360-pixel screen, the Download PDF button stays reachable at the bottom while you scroll, and the PDF downloads to the phone. Most truck stop print kiosks will take it off a USB stick or an emailed attachment.

Does a bill of lading have to be signed to be valid?

For it to work as a receipt, yes: the carrier signs at pickup to acknowledge what was loaded and in what condition. The consignee signs at delivery, and that signature is what turns the document into proof of delivery. An unsigned BOL is a shipping instruction, not evidence.

Can I create my own bill of lading online?

Yes. On domestic freight a bill of lading does not have to come from the carrier: the shipper normally prepares it, and it becomes the carrier's receipt when the driver signs at pickup. Fill in the form above, download the PDF and print three copies. The two exceptions are a carrier that insists on its own form or an EDI tender, and ocean bills, which the carrier or its agent issues.

Who fills out the bill of lading, the shipper or the carrier?

Usually the shipper, although the legal duty sits with the carrier. Under 49 U.S.C. 14706 a carrier must issue a receipt or bill of lading for freight it receives. In practice the shipper does the paperwork, since only it knows what is on the pallets, a broker or 3PL may prepare it instead, and the driver checks the count and signs. The PRO, trailer and seal numbers often go on at the dock.

Is a bill of lading legally required?

For for-hire interstate trucking, yes. 49 CFR 373.101 requires a for-hire, non-exempt motor carrier to issue a receipt or bill of lading for freight it accepts, showing the parties, the origin and destination, the package count and the freight. A company moving its own goods on its own trucks is outside that rule. Practically, most carriers will not load without one, and a claim is very hard to win if there is no signed copy.

Can I use one bill of lading for several pallets?

Yes. One bill of lading covers one shipment, meaning one shipper, one consignee and one pickup, however many pallets are on it. Add a freight line for each commodity, with its own handling units, weight and class, and the form totals them. Two consignees means two bills, even on the same trailer.

Is an LTL bill of lading different from a truckload one?

The form is the same; what changes is which boxes carry the weight. LTL carriers rate freight by class, so the NMFC number, class, handling units and scale weight drive the invoice, and the VICS guideline marks those columns as LTL only. On truckload the rate is usually agreed per mile or per load, so they are often left blank, and the trailer and seal numbers matter more because the load stays sealed from dock to dock.