FedEx Bill of Lading

FedEx Freight is FedEx's less-than-truckload operation, and LTL freight moves on a bill of lading rather than a parcel label. FedEx publishes its own BOL and its own shipping tools, and for a FedEx Freight shipment their document is always the safe choice — get it from FedEx directly.

First: which FedEx are you shipping with?

This trips people up before the paperwork does. FedEx runs several distinct operations, 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.

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.

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. For a FedEx Freight shipment, use theirs. 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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