FedEx Bill of Lading

FedEx Freight is a less-than-truckload carrier, and LTL freight moves on a bill of lading rather than a parcel label. Since June 1, 2026 it has been a separate public company from FedEx. It publishes its own BOL and shipping tools, and says a BOL from another source can be used too, so its own document is the safe choice rather than the only one.

First: which FedEx are you shipping with?

This trips people up before the paperwork does. The FedEx name now covers two separate companies, after FedEx Freight was spun off on June 1, 2026, and the document you need depends on which one is moving the freight.

If you are sending six pallets, you want a bill of lading. If you are sending a box, you want a label from their parcel system and this page is not what you need.

How to get a FedEx Freight bill of lading

FedEx Freight gives you three ways to get one, and says a BOL is required for all domestic and international LTL shipments, including those sent through freight forwarders. This is what its forms page said on November 2, 2026, so check there for changes.

• Create it online. FedEx Freight says this means a faster pickup, tracking from the start and a digital record. Tracking on a paper BOL does not start until the shipment is entered manually.
• Download its blank form. Complete the editable fields and print it, or print it and fill it in by hand. The driver takes it at pickup and gives it to your recipient at delivery, and it acts as your receipt and shipping label.
• Use a BOL from another source. FedEx Freight says you can use a BOL from a non-FedEx Freight source, which is where a generic form or the generator on this site fits.

Some shipments need more. International, hazmat, and shipper load and count shipments need a paper BOL in the driver's hand at pickup, even if you created the shipment online. A major retailer may call for a VICS BOL with its supplemental commodity form. Customers on the Space and Pace program, which prices on actual dimensions rather than NMFC class, have their own BOL. Shipments to Canada, Mexico or Puerto Rico add the customs forms listed on the same page, starting with a commercial invoice.

Why some carriers insist on their own form

A bill of lading is a legal document, but it is also an input to a carrier's operating system. The barcodes, the field positions and the layout are designed to be scanned and keyed by that carrier's dock and imaging equipment. A carrier's own BOL flows through that process cleanly; a document in a different layout may need a human to handle it.

That is the practical reason behind "please use our form", and it is a reasonable one. It is also why the answer to "will they accept a generic BOL?" is genuinely carrier-specific and account- specific, and why the only reliable source for it is the carrier.

The information underneath does not change, though, and that is the useful part. Every LTL carrier needs the same facts about your shipment. Getting those right matters more than the layout they sit in.

What any LTL carrier needs from you

Whichever form you end up filling in, these are the entries that decide whether the shipment is rated correctly and whether a claim would be payable.

• Shipper and consignee, in full. Legal names, street addresses, contacts and phone numbers. Plus the consignee's receiving hours and whether an appointment is needed.
• Handling units and pieces. Two different numbers. Six pallets holding 144 cartons is six handling units and 144 pieces, and LTL freight is rated and counted on the first.
• A real commodity description. What it is, how it is packaged, how it is secured. "Freight" is not a description.
• NMFC item number and freight class. The pair that determines the rate. Density, stowability, handling and liability set the class.
• Actual gross weight. Including pallets and packaging. LTL carriers weigh freight, so estimates come back as adjusted invoices.
• Freight terms. Prepaid, collect or third party, and the bill-to address if it is neither end.
• Accessorials. Liftgate, inside delivery, residential, limited access, notify before delivery. Undisclosed accessorials get charged anyway and argued about afterwards.
• Hazardous materials, if any. Marked in the HM column, described in the required sequence, with a monitored 24-hour emergency response number on the paper.

The the walkthrough of every entry a carrier reads goes through all of these in order, and flags the four that most often turn a routine claim into a denied one.

Freight class is where the money goes wrong

On any LTL carrier, the sequence is the same: you declare a class, the carrier weighs and inspects the shipment somewhere along the line, and if their measurement disagrees with your declaration they reclassify and rebill. The invoice arrives higher than the quote, often with an inspection fee attached.

Nothing about that is punitive. The carrier is rating what it actually hauled. But it is the single biggest source of unpleasant surprises in LTL, and it is entirely avoidable by measuring the shipping unit rather than the product — length, width and total height including the pallet — and using the gross weight.

Classification has moved substantially onto a density basis in recent years, so an NMFC item number copied from an old bill of lading is not safe to reuse. Confirm the current item with your carrier.

The density scale FedEx Freight publishes

Since NMFC Docket 2025-1 took effect on July 19, 2025, density-based items rate on a 13-step scale, and FedEx Freight prints the same breaks on its own class calculator page. Density is gross weight in pounds divided by cubic feet. Cubic feet is length × width × height in inches, divided by 1,728.

A worked case: a 48 × 40 pallet stacked to 60 inches, deck included, weighing 650 pounds with the pallet. That is 115,200 cubic inches, or 66.7 cubic feet, for a density of 9.75 pounds per cubic foot and class 100. Load 17 more pounds onto the same footprint and it crosses 10 pounds per cubic foot, which drops it to class 92.5. Freight sitting that close to a break is worth putting on a real scale. The freight class calculator runs the same arithmetic for several pallets at once and shows how far each sits from the next break.

FedEx describes its calculator's output as an estimate. The class that sticks is the one your commodity's NMFC item and its demonstrated characteristics support, and FedEx's own rule for a pallet carrying items of different classes is that it defaults to the highest of them. Where class goes on the form is covered in the field-by-field BOL walkthrough.

BOL number, PRO number, tracking

Your BOL number is yours. Use a purchase order, a sales order, a sequence — anything you can search for six months later.

The PRO number belongs to the carrier. It is normally applied at pickup as a barcode label, and it is the number their system tracks. Both end up on the freight invoice, which is how you reconcile a bill against a shipment. Write the PRO onto your file copy at pickup rather than trying to find it later.

What the generator on this site produces

A standard short-form straight bill of lading: shipper, consignee, bill-to, carrier, freight lines with NMFC number and class, declared value, Section 7, special instructions and three signature blocks. It is the layout most LTL and truckload carriers work from, and it carries every field listed above.

It is not a FedEx form and does not pretend to be one. FedEx Freight's forms page says a BOL from another source can be used, but its own online BOL gives you tracking from the start, so it is usually the better choice for a FedEx Freight shipment. Where this is genuinely useful is everywhere else: a carrier without its own form, a broker-arranged truckload, a shipper who needs a clean document at short notice, or checking that the information you are about to key into a carrier's system is complete before you start.

You can build one with the free bill of lading generator, or use the template page if you need the long form or the VICS retail layout instead.

The question to ask before pickup

One sentence, asked of your carrier representative, avoids the entire problem this page exists to describe: "Do you require your own bill of lading for this shipment, or will a standard short-form BOL do?"

Ask it when you book, not when the driver is at the door. The answer takes thirty seconds and it is definitive, which is more than any third-party page — including this one — can offer you about another company's requirements.

Common questions

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