Bill of Lading Template

Three layouts, one set of fields

The differences between BOL layouts are smaller than the number of templates online suggests, and one site's BOL template usually asks for the same blocks as the next one's. Almost all of them collect the same information; what changes is how much legal text is printed on the face and whether there is a block for purchase orders. Switch layouts with the selector at the top of the form and the data you have already typed carries across. To see a finished one before you start, the bill of lading example walks through a completed form line by line.

Standard short form

The default, and the right answer for most freight. A short-form BOL prints a condensed incorporation clause rather than the full conditions of carriage. The terms still apply, they just live in the carrier's tariff and the National Motor Freight Classification instead of on the back of your sheet. That is what "short form" means, and it is why the whole document fits on one page. Carriers read these all day.

Long form

The same shipment with the conditions of carriage spelled out on the document: the carrier's liability under the Carmack Amendment, the exceptions that release it, and the claim-filing windows. It also opens a hazardous materials block for the 24-hour emergency response number and the response registrant. Use it when a consignee's receiving department asks for full terms, or when you are moving regulated material and want the emergency contact printed where a first responder will find it. A shipment of a few freight lines fits on one page; more run onto a second.

VICS layout

Built for the retail supply chain. The distinguishing feature is a customer order block that sits above the freight description, listing each purchase order with its package count, weight and whether it moved on a pallet or a slip sheet. Retail distribution centers reconcile against purchase orders rather than against pallets, so a BOL that cannot show which PO is on which handling unit slows down receiving. If a retailer's routing guide names the VICS BOL, use this.

The VICS bill of lading comes from the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards group, whose published guideline covers US domestic LTL and truckload freight. Its strictest rule is the number. Since July 1, 2003 the standard VICS BOL number has run to 17 digits: a company prefix, a serial number the shipper assigns, and a Modulo 10 check digit. The same number is meant to appear in the EDI messages about the shipment, so a retailer's system can match paper to data.

A shipment can outgrow one sheet in two ways. Extra purchase orders continue on a supplement, which the guideline treats as a continuation of page one and not a separate bill. Several bills moving together, such as a consolidation or a multi-stop truckload, are tied up by a master bill of lading that shows grand totals only and says "See Attached Underlying Bills of Lading".

The layout here prints the customer order block, the carrier block and the totals. It does not calculate the 17-digit number or print the barcode, so enter the number your own system produces in the BOL number box, and let the retailer's routing guide settle anything this page and the guideline leave open.

Blank bill of lading to print and fill in by hand

The same template, empty: a blank BOL template you print and complete with a pen. Ruled freight lines, US Letter, and deliberately no number or date printed on it, so a stack in a drawer stays usable for months. If you would rather type the details, the form above fills the same sheet in on screen, and the bill of lading form on the front page does the short form.

Which blank to print

The layouts above, as a table, with the number of pages each blank prints on.

Why nothing is pre-printed

Most blank BOLs you find online are a filled-in form with the values deleted, which means they still carry whatever document number and date the generator stamped on them. Print twenty and you have twenty sheets all claiming to be the same bill of lading, dated the day you happened to hit print.

These do not. The number box and the date box are empty, and every field that would otherwise print a dash is left as white space you can write on. A stack printed in March is still correct in September.

Filling one in by hand

Work top to bottom and do not leave the middle blank because you are in a hurry: the empty fields are the ones that cost money later.

1. Your own number and the date. Any sequence works as long as you do not reuse one. The date is the date the freight moves, not the date you printed the sheet.
2. Shipper and consignee in full. Company, street, city, state, ZIP, and a phone number for each. A consignee with no phone number is a driver sitting at a closed dock.
3. One line per commodity. Handling units, package type, piece count, description, NMFC item number, freight class and the actual weight. Guessing the class is the single most expensive habit in LTL: a reclass bill arrives weeks later and it is very hard to argue with.
4. Freight terms. Prepaid, collect or third party, marked clearly. If you are billing a third party, write their name and address in the bill-to block rather than assuming the carrier knows.
5. Signatures at pickup. The driver signs for what they took. If they note an exception, read it before they leave. That note is the carrier's defence to a claim.

The field-by-field walkthrough covers every block in detail, and there is a filled-in example if you would rather see one completed than read about it.

Blank forms for the rest of the paperwork

The same empty-and-printable version exists for every other document here, and for the same reason: counting freight, recording times and taking a signature all happen at a dock with a pen.

• Blank delivery receipt: count columns and exception lines, for the clipboard
• Blank lumper receipt: keep a few in the cab and fill one in while the lumper is still there
• Blank freight invoice: for working out a bill before typing it up
• Blank rate confirmation: useful as a reference for what a complete one contains
• Blank house bill of lading: for forwarded and consolidated freight

Word and Excel versions

This template comes out as a PDF rather than a Word or Excel file, and that is deliberate. A PDF prints the same on any machine. An office document can shift its margins between printers and push a line off the bottom of the sheet, and the bottom of a bill of lading is where the signatures go.

Most people asking for an editable version want one of two things. If it is to stop retyping the same shipper and consignees, a free account saves them as parties and fills them in. If it is to rewrite the terms, a spreadsheet is the wrong tool: the conditions of carriage come from the carrier's tariff and the classification rules, and changing them takes a written agreement with the carrier, not an edited cell.

Keeping your own Word master is still fine if it suits your office. Print a test sheet on the printer the dock actually uses, and check it against the fields in 49 CFR 373.101 before the first live shipment.

When a blank is the wrong choice

Two cases. If a carrier or a retailer's routing guide requires their own document, use theirs: a blank you printed does not replace a carrier-branded form, and receiving will send the driver away. And if you need a negotiable original bill of lading, printing a blank does not give you one: a negotiable original needs issuer control and endorsement handling that a downloaded sheet cannot provide.

Ocean, vehicle and equipment shipments

This template is built for domestic truck freight, and three kinds of shipment need something extra. An ocean shipment needs vessel, voyage, port and notify party fields that a trucking BOL does not carry. The house bill of lading generator has all of them, and forwarded freight is what it is for.

A vehicle move is about condition rather than count. The hauler and the customer inspect the vehicle together at pickup, mark every existing scratch and dent, and check the same sheet at delivery, which is how a new dent gets assigned to the right party. There is no damage diagram on this template, so put the VIN, year, make, model and existing damage in the special instructions box, and take dated photos from all four sides.

Heavy equipment fits the standard blocks better than most people expect. List each machine on its own freight line with make, model, serial number and weight, then put overall dimensions and any loading notes in special instructions.

What each block on the template is for

Document block — BOL number, date, PRO

Leave the BOL number blank and one is generated for you in the form BOL-YYYYMMDD-XXXX. Type your own if you number shipments in sequence or want the purchase order to double as the reference. The PRO number belongs to the carrier and is usually added at pickup, so it is fine to leave empty and write in by hand when the driver applies the barcode label.

Ship from and ship to

Company name, street address, city, state and ZIP at both ends. City and state are required because a BOL without an origin and destination is not a contract of carriage, it is a note. The contact and phone lines earn their space: a driver who can call the receiver from twenty minutes out is a driver who does not sit through a two-hour detention because the dock closed at three.

The consignee's receiving hours and appointment requirement go here too. If the delivery needs an appointment and the BOL does not say so, the first anyone finds out is when the truck is parked outside a locked gate.

Bill freight charges to

Leave it empty and the charges follow the freight terms. Fill it in when a third party is paying: a broker, a customer's freight-payment company, a corporate AP address that is nowhere near the receiving dock. Getting this wrong is how invoices end up on the wrong desk for six weeks.

The freight description

One line per commodity, and this is the part carriers actually read. Each line takes:

Running totals sit under the freight lines as you type, so the handling unit count and the gross weight on the printed document match what you meant to send. If the piece count depends on how many cartons go on each pallet, the pallet calculator works that out first. If any line is hazardous, a flag appears reminding you that the shipping paper needs the full regulated description and a 24-hour emergency response number.

Declared value, COD and Section 7

Declared value is the most consequential empty box on a bill of lading. Leave it blank and the carrier's tariff limitation applies: a released value in dollars per pound that has nothing to do with what your freight cost. Fill it in and you are stating, in writing on the contract, what the goods are worth. Expect to pay a little more in freight for the privilege; expect to recover a great deal more when a forklift goes through a pallet.

Section 7 is the non-recourse clause. Sign it and the carrier agrees to look only to the consignee for the freight charges. Leave it unsigned on a collect shipment and, if the consignee does not pay, the carrier can come back to you. Small box, real money.

Special instructions and accessorials

Liftgate, inside delivery, residential, limited access, notify before delivery, do not double stack, appointment required. Anything the carrier must do beyond dock-to-dock goes here. An accessorial that was needed but never written down turns into a surprise on the invoice, and the argument that follows is one you will lose, because the BOL is the contract.

A workflow that survives a busy dock

The order that works: build the BOL before the truck arrives, print three copies, and leave the PRO number and seal number blank on the printed page. When the driver shows up, write the PRO from the carrier's label and the seal number by hand, then both parties sign. Trying to finalise a document while a driver waits is how the weight gets guessed and the class gets left off.

Give the driver a copy, send one with the freight for the consignee, and keep one. If a claim comes up later, your copy plus the signed delivery receipt is the whole case. Everything else is commentary.

Shipping to a single named consignee who cannot transfer the goods on? That is a straight BOL, and the non-negotiable straight BOL form is set up with that wording on the masthead. If you are not sure which type of bill of lading a lane calls for, start with what a bill of lading legally is; the distinction between straight and order bills is the one that matters most.

What happens to the document after you hand it over

Knowing where each field ends up is what makes the fussy ones worth the extra thirty seconds. A bill of lading does not stop at the dock; it becomes data in three separate systems before anyone gets paid.

At pickup the driver applies a PRO label and the shipment enters the carrier's system under that number. Your BOL number rides along as a reference, which is why it is worth making it something you can search for later. Overnight, the freight moves through a terminal, and on LTL that is usually where it crosses a forklift scale or a dimensioner. Weight and dimensions get compared against what you declared.

Then it gets rated. The NMFC item and class you wrote determine the tariff line the shipment is billed on. If the terminal's measurements disagree with your entries, the carrier issues a weight and inspection certificate, reclassifies, and the invoice that lands on the bill-to address is not the number you were quoted. That single sequence (declare, verify, rebill) is behind most freight invoice disputes, and it is decided entirely by three boxes on this form.

Delivery closes the loop. The consignee signs, the delivery receipt goes back into the carrier's imaging system, and that scanned signature is what any later claim is argued over.

Limitations, stated plainly

A generated document is a standard short-form bill of lading. It is not a carrier's branded form, and a few carriers insist on theirs, while retail routing guides sometimes name a specific document. Ask before pickup.

The tool does not rate freight, look up NMFC item numbers, validate a freight class or check a hazardous materials description against the regulations. It prints what you type. For a shipment with regulated material on it, the shipping paper requirements in 49 CFR are the authority, not a web form, and getting the basic description sequence wrong is a fine rather than an inconvenience.

Used signed out, nothing is stored, and that cuts both ways: there is no history to go back to and no saved consignee list, so download the PDF when you make it. A company that wants those things can have them with a free account, where saved parties and document history are the whole point. If you want the whole picture before you print anything, the walkthrough of the mistakes that get claims denied is worth ten minutes, and the free bill of lading generator on the front page is the same engine with a simpler form if you only need the short version.

Common questions