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Freight address verificationThe address decides the fee, not the freight.
Most surprise charges on an LTL invoice have nothing to do with what was on the pallet. They come from something true about the pickup or delivery location that nobody checked before the truck was sent.
Why a location creates a charge
A carrier prices a shipment on the assumption that both ends are ordinary commercial docks. A truck pulls up, a forklift meets it, the freight comes off, the driver leaves.
When that is not what happens, the carrier bills for the difference. No dock means the driver needs a liftgate. A school or a construction site takes longer and needs someone to meet the truck. A house is a residential delivery whether or not a business operates out of it. None of that is about your freight. It is about the address.
And the carrier finds out at the curb, which is well after you were quoted.
What address verification checks
We use Shiplify®, the address verification built into the GlobalTranz platform. It looks up what is actually true about each location before the shipment is priced.
Is there a dock
A location without one needs a liftgate at that end, and a liftgate added afterwards is one of the most common charges on a corrected invoice.
Is it limited access
Schools, churches, farms, construction sites, self-storage, military bases. Carriers do not all define the term the same way, which is why the same address can be free on one and billable on another.
Is it residential
A business run from a house still delivers to a house. The carrier bills it as residential regardless of the name on the bill of lading.
You often cannot tell by looking
This is the part that catches experienced shippers. An address can look like a normal commercial building and still be classified limited access by the carrier. A customer can insist they have a dock when what they have is a roll-up door at ground level.
Nobody is being difficult. The people at either end are describing the place they work every day, in the words they use for it. The carrier is applying a definition from a tariff. Those two things come apart more often than you would think.
Checking the address against what carriers already know about it removes the guess.
What we do with the answer
The check runs while the shipment is being quoted, not after it moves. Anything the location needs is on the rate you see, so the number in front of you is the number for the shipment as it actually is.
You still decide. If a location needs a liftgate and you know the receiver has a forklift that day, say so and we will quote it without. What you do not get is finding out three weeks later on an invoice.
If a carrier does report something different after the fact, that is handled the same way everything else is — our team comes to you directly and disputes it where there is a case.
Send us the two addresses.
We will tell you what those locations are going to need before you book anything, and what it does to the rate.