Freight (LTL)

Freight endpoints let you quote, book, track, and manage less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments — the freight that is too large to ship as a parcel but does not fill a trailer on its own. A pallet of furniture, a crate of machine parts, or a few drums of coating all travel as LTL.

LTL works differently from parcel shipping, and the API reflects that:

• You quote before you book. LTL prices are not published rate cards; they are offers from carriers for your specific freight on a specific lane. Every booking references an offer returned by a quote.
• You ship handling units, not packages. The carrier handles pallets, crates, or drums, and each one contains one or more commodities — the actual goods, each with its own freight class.
• Extra services are priced in. Liftgates, inside delivery, and appointment scheduling are accessorials, and they change the price of the quote.
• The Bill of Lading is the shipping document. Booking generates a Bill of Lading (BOL) rather than a label, along with pallet labels and other paperwork.

1. List freight provider accounts — look up the freight_provider_account_id of the freight provider connection to work through.
2. Get freight quotes — describe the freight and receive offers from the carriers available through your freight provider.
3. Book a freight shipment — book one of those offers and get back a BOL number and documents.
4. Download the documents — print the Bill of Lading and pallet labels for the driver.
5. Track the shipment — follow it from pickup to delivery.

• An active freight provider connection. Freight is quoted and booked through a freight provider account connected to your account, identified by a freight_provider_account_id. Every freight request requires one, and requests that reference an inactive or unknown connection return a 400 Bad Request.
• An API key. All requests are authenticated with your API key, included in the API-Key header of every request.

Both Get freight quotes and Book a freight shipment accept the shipment in one of two ways.

In the linked mode, the freight details you send when quoting — handling_units, accessorials, and insurance — are saved as the shipment's freight configuration. Booking that shipment reuses the saved configuration, so handling_units must be omitted when booking. Quote a shipment before you book it: booking a shipment_id that has no saved freight configuration returns a 400 Bad Request.

The freight endpoints use a single fixed unit for each measurement. There are no unit fields to set.

A handling unit is what the carrier physically moves and counts. A commodity is a line of goods inside it.

{
  "handling_units": [
    {
      "type": "pallet",
      "quantity": 2,
      "length": 48,
      "width": 40,
      "height": 52,
      "stackable": false,
      "commodities": [
        {
          "description": "Assembled oak dining chairs",
          "quantity": 24,
          "weight": 310,
          "freight_class": "125",
          "packaging_type": "carton"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This describes two identical pallets, each 48 × 40 × 52 inches, each holding 24 cartons of chairs weighing 310 lb in total. Dimensions, weight, and commodities always describe one handling unit — the carrier multiplies by quantity.

stackable matters more than it looks: non-stackable freight occupies trailer height that cannot be sold to anyone else, and carriers price accordingly.

Every commodity needs a freight_class — an NMFTA classification from 50 (dense, durable, cheap to ship) to 500 (light, bulky, or fragile). Class is derived from density, stowability, handling, and liability, and it is one of the largest factors in the price of an LTL shipment.

Valid values are 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 77.5, 85, 92.5, 100, 110, 125, 150, 175, 200, 250, 300, 400, and 500. Send them as strings.

Accessorials are extra services, and they are priced into the quote. You send them only on the quote request — there is no accessorials field on the booking request. The offer you book already carries the accessorials it was priced with, which is why offer_id and quote_request_id are all the booking needs to identify what you are buying.

So get them right before you quote. Adding a liftgate after the fact means requesting fresh quotes and booking a new offer; there is no way to attach an accessorial to an offer that was priced without it.

Also set location_type when the location is not a plain commercial address. Residential, limited-access, construction, and similar locations carry their own surcharges, and declaring them up front keeps the quote accurate. It appears in three places: on ship_from and ship_to when quoting, and on pickup_details when booking.

airport, carrier_terminal, commercial, construction, container_freight_station, distribution_center, government_facility, limited_access, pier_port_wharf, residential, secured_access, trade_show

The value is validated against that list, so a typo is rejected with a 400 Bad Request rather than quietly dropped. Omitting the field entirely is always allowed.

Carrier liability is capped per pound and is usually far below what the freight is actually worth — the max_liability_new and max_liability_used values on each quote show the cap for that offer. Add an insurance object to the quote to price cargo insurance alongside the freight charges:

{
  "insurance": {
    "insured_value": 18500,
    "item_condition": "new",
    "commodity_category": "furniture",
    "marks_numbers": "NG-2026-0417"
  }
}

Offers then include insured_amount, insurance_premium (already part of total_charges), and an insurance_certificate_number once the insurer issues one. Insured values are in USD.

The presence of the insurance object is what requests insurance — there is no boolean to set. Two consequences worth knowing:

• Always send insured_value. It is not validated, so an insurance object without it requests insurance with a declared value of 0 rather than returning an error.
• Insurance is priced at quote time, like accessorials. There is no insurance field on the booking request, so adding coverage after the fact means re-quoting.

A commodity carrying a hazardous_materials object is flagged as hazmat, and the details are printed on the Bill of Lading. Hazmat freight requires the full set of regulatory fields:

{
  "description": "Paint, flammable",
  "quantity": 8,
  "weight": 420,
  "freight_class": "70",
  "hazardous_materials": {
    "identification_number_type": "un",
    "identification_number": "UN1263",
    "proper_shipping_name": "Paint",
    "hazard_class": "3",
    "subsidiary_hazard_classes": ["8"],
    "packing_group": "iii",
    "emergency_contact_name": "Chemtrec",
    "emergency_contact_phone": "+1 800 424 9300",
    "emergency_response_reference": "CCN12345",
    "flashpoint_temperature": 73
  }
}

• identification_number_type is un or na.
• packing_group is i, ii, iii, or none.
• subsidiary_hazard_classes must not contain duplicates or repeat the primary hazard_class.
• emergency_contact_name and emergency_contact_phone must reach a 24-hour response service.

See the Full API Reference for the full list of accepted hazard classes.

Freight shipments carry a coarse status and, when tracking, a finer-grained tracking_status from the carrier.

Several carrier tracking statuses roll up into one shipment status. dispatched, in_route_to_pickup, at_pickup, out_for_delivery, and at_delivery all appear as in_transit. Read tracking_status when you need the detail.