Glossary

What these terms actually mean here

Defined against how this platform actually works, not generic freight-industry definitions.

Equipment

Flatbed: An open deck with no walls or roof, loaded from the top or side instead of through trailer doors — steel, lumber, machinery, and building materials.
Step Deck (Drop Deck): A flatbed with a lower rear deck, giving taller freight extra vertical clearance without exceeding legal height.
Conestoga: A flatbed with a retractable curtain-side cover — the load protection of a dry van with the top/side loading of a flatbed.
Dry Van: An enclosed box trailer loaded and unloaded through rear doors — the standard equipment for palletized, boxed general freight.
Reefer: A temperature-controlled trailer with an active refrigeration unit, for produce, food, and anything else that can't ride uncontrolled.

Flat Rate: A fixed price agreed before pickup — not a live bidding war. A load can also be posted per-mile or per-day, but there's no auction mechanic on the board.
Instant Quote: A market-rate freight quote generated in seconds from real government pricing indices for your specific origin, destination, and equipment type.
Booking Fee: The platform's own service fee, a percentage of the load's rate, paid upfront once a carrier books. The freight charge itself settles directly between shipper and carrier — the booking fee isn't part of that payment.
Lane: A specific origin-state-to-destination-state freight pairing, e.g. Arkansas to Illinois — used to track real volume and typical rates on routes that actually move.

FMCSA Authority: A carrier's active operating authority on file with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — checked live against FMCSA's own records, not self-reported.
MC Number / DOT Number: The Motor Carrier and Department of Transportation numbers the FMCSA lookup runs against to confirm a carrier's authority, insurance on file, and safety history.
Identity Verification: A separate check from FMCSA authority — confirms the real person behind an account (name, date of birth, government ID) before they can book a load or post publicly.
Government Contracts Eligibility: The bar for the Government Contracts board: both FMCSA authority and identity verification, required together, not either one alone.

Live Tracking: Real GPS position shared from the driver's tracking app or hardware for the duration of an active booking — not a manually toggled feature.
Privacy Zone: A radius a driver sets around a sensitive location, like home — inside it, dispatch and shippers see the zone's center point instead of the driver's exact position. It blurs, it doesn't hide.
Control Tower: The internal dispatch view showing every active shipment, truck, and driver ping at once — the operational counterpart to a shipper's single-load tracking link.
Tracking Link: A one-time link scoped to a single shipment's assigned truck, showing the live map and a chat thread with the carrier — it expires roughly 48 hours after delivery.