Getting started
Glossary
The freight, finance and software words used in Harbor and in these docs, in plain English.
Freight words
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Drayage | Moving a shipping container a short distance by truck: port or rail yard to a warehouse or customer, and back. |
| Load | One job you are paid for: usually one container moved from pickup to delivery. Each load has an ID like AR-0042. |
| Leg | One part of a load's journey, when it is split between moves (for example port → yard, then yard → customer). |
| Stop | A place the truck goes on a load: pickup, delivery, warehouse, rail yard, port, cross dock or other. |
| Container number | The box's ID, four letters and seven digits (MSCU1234567). Never shortened in Harbor. |
| BL / Bill of lading | The ocean shipping document that lists the containers in a shipment. |
| Arrival notice | The steamship line's notice that a vessel with your containers is arriving. In Harbor it becomes one load per container. |
| SSL | Steamship line, the ocean carrier (MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM…). |
| Last free day (LFD) | The last day a container can sit at the terminal before the line charges demurrage. |
| Demurrage | The terminal or line's daily charge for a full container left at the port after the last free day. |
| Per diem | The line's daily charge for keeping its container (or chassis) out too long before returning it empty. |
| Detention | Paying a carrier for waiting time at pickup or delivery beyond the free hours. |
| Chassis | The trailer frame a container sits on. Often charged per day. |
| Empty return | Taking the empty container back to the line after delivery. Stops per diem. |
| POD | Proof of delivery: the signed delivery receipt. Needed before the customer is billed. |
| Rate confirmation | The document that confirms to a carrier what you will pay them for a load. |
| Delivery order (DO) | The document that tells a carrier to collect a container and where to take it. |
| Dispatch sheet | The driver's instructions for the load. |
| Check call | A call or message to the driver or carrier to learn where the load is and its ETA. |
| Accessorials | Extra charges beyond the line haul: chassis, storage, detention, per diem, and so on. |
| Line haul | The main charge for moving the load from A to B. |
| FSC | Fuel surcharge. |
| Lane | A regular route, origin to destination, that you price again and again. |
| Tariff | A customer's agreed sell rate on a lane. |
| RFQ | Request for quote: asking several carriers for a price at once. |
Carrier and compliance words
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MC number | The carrier's motor carrier operating authority number from FMCSA. |
| DOT number | The carrier's US Department of Transportation number. |
| FMCSA | The US federal agency that registers carriers. Harbor looks carriers up in its database. |
| W-9 | The US tax form a carrier gives you so you can pay them. |
| Pending compliance | A new carrier that has not yet been reviewed and approved. It cannot be dispatched. |
| Vetting checklist | Up to ten checks your company requires before a carrier can be approved. |
| Factoring company | A company a carrier sells its invoices to. You then pay the factoring company instead of the carrier. |
Money words
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Customer rate | What the customer pays you for a load (the sell rate). |
| Carrier rate | What you pay the carrier (the buy rate). |
| Margin | Customer rate minus carrier rate. The brokerage's gross profit on the load. |
| Advance | Money you pay the steamship line or customs on the customer's behalf, which the customer must repay (plus your fee) before the box moves. |
| Receivables (AR) | What customers owe you. |
| Payables (AP) | What you owe carriers. |
| Aging | How overdue an unpaid invoice is: Current, 1–30, 31–60 or 60+ days. |
| Credit limit | The most a customer may owe you (unpaid invoices plus open loads) before new loads are held. |
| Exposure | What a customer owes you now: unpaid invoices plus loads booked but not yet paid. |
| Debit note / credit note | An adjustment that adds to (debit) or takes off (credit) what a customer owes. |
| Statement (SOA) | A statement of account: everything a customer has been billed and has paid over a period. |
| Commission | The share of margin paid to a sales agent (default 35%). |
| P&L | Profit and loss: revenue minus carrier cost minus operating expenses. |
Software words
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Org / company | One brokerage's private account in Harbor. Nothing crosses between orgs. |
| Panel | The staff application at /app. |
| Portal | The separate, smaller application your customers or carriers sign in to. |
| Role | A named set of permissions (Owner, Finance Manager, Sales Manager…). A person can hold several. |
| Module | An area of the software that permissions are given for (loads, invoices, carriers…). |
| Audit log | The permanent record of who changed what, and when. |
| Proposal | Something a customer or carrier submits from a portal. It changes nothing until staff approve it. |
| Simulated | An outside service running on sample answers because no live account key has been saved yet. Always labelled. |
| Super-admin | The people who run Harbor itself, and manage every org on the platform. |