There is no federal rule that specifies rate confirmation required fields. A rate con is a commercial document, not a regulated one, and that is exactly why the field list matters: nothing external will fill the gaps for you. Every field a rate con omits becomes a settlement argument later, and the arguments are predictable enough that you can design the document to foreclose them.
The working list is twelve fields plus a small set of conditional ones: load and reference identifiers, parties and authority, equipment and commodity, stop schedule with appointment type, the linehaul rate and its basis, the mileage basis, the fuel surcharge mechanic, the accessorial schedule with authorization language, detention terms with free time and increment, document and invoicing requirements, payment terms, and the signature block with the return deadline.
This post walks each one and names the dispute it kills. If you settle carrier invoices for a living, the value here is not the list, it is the mapping from field to argument.
Why the rate con carries the weight it does
Federal rules describe what a bill of lading and a freight bill must contain, not what a rate confirmation must contain. Under 49 CFR 373.101, a motor carrier’s receipt or bill of lading must show consignor and consignee names, origin and destination, package count, freight description, and weight, volume or measurement where relevant to rating. Under 49 CFR 373.103, the freight or expense bill must show those identifiers plus the exact rates assessed and the total charges due with the nature and amount of each charge, the route and participating carriers, transfer points, and the remittance address.
Notice the shape of that. Regulation governs the shipment record and the bill. The agreement between what was quoted and what gets billed is yours to document. A practitioner walkthrough of winning freight detention disputes puts the rate confirmation first among the three documents you need before contesting a carrier invoice, precisely because it is the only one that records free time, the rate, and the clock-trigger language.
So the rate con is the authoritative record of the deal, and it is authoritative only to the extent it is specific. A well-built one turns settlement from a negotiation into a comparison, which is the same principle behind reconciling a rate con against the carrier invoice.
The field spec
| Field | What it must say | Dispute it forecloses |
|---|---|---|
| Load number and broker reference | Your load ID, plus shipper PO or reference | Invoice you cannot match to a load |
| Carrier legal name, MC/DOT, remit-to | Legal entity, not the dispatcher’s DBA | Paying a double-broker or the wrong entity |
| Equipment type and requirements | Trailer type, length, temp range, tarps, pallet exchange | Post-hoc charges for equipment “required” but never stated |
| Commodity, weight, piece count | Description and weight as tendered | Reweigh and reclass charges with no baseline to compare |
| Stops, in order, with dates and windows | Full address, date, appointment or FCFS, appointment number | “We waited because you gave us the wrong window” |
| Appointment type | Explicitly appointment, window, or first come first served | Detention clocks starting at the wrong event |
| Linehaul rate and basis | Flat, per mile, per cwt, and the total | Rate drift and minimum-charge surprises |
| Mileage basis | Engine, version, routing option, and zip or dock basis | Per-mile invoices billed on a longer mileage table |
| Fuel surcharge | Included in the flat rate, or index, region, week, peg, increment, basis | Fuel added on top of an all-in rate |
| Accessorial schedule | Priced list, plus the authorization rule | Charges that first appear on the invoice |
| Detention terms | Free time, trigger event, increment, rate, cap | The most common settlement argument in freight |
| Document requirements | Signed BOL, POD with in and out times, lumper receipt, scale ticket | Invoices with no evidence attached |
| Invoicing and payment terms | Where to bill, submission deadline, terms, quick-pay | Late invoices and payment-timing friction |
| Signature and return deadline | Signed, dated, returned before dispatch | “We never agreed to that rate” |
Now the fields that carry the most weight, in more detail.
Parties, authority and the remit-to
Three separate things that a single “Carrier:” line collapses into one.
Legal name and MC/DOT number. Not the dispatch service’s name. Not a DBA. The entity you verified, the entity on the insurance certificate, the entity with the operating authority.
Remit-to. If the rate con names the remit-to at the time of booking, a mid-stream factoring assignment has to be reconciled against a document rather than an email. Payment to the wrong party is the most expensive settlement error there is, because the money is gone before the dispute begins.
Contact and dispatcher. A name and a phone number that existed at booking. When a load goes sideways three weeks later and the phone number is dead, that record is evidence about who you were dealing with.
Add the anti-rebrokering clause here rather than burying it in the carrier packet. It is the clause you will actually need to point to.
Stops, appointment type and the detention clock
This is the highest-leverage section of the entire document, because detention is the most-argued accessorial in freight and most detention arguments are actually arguments about the schedule.
Each stop needs: full address including the specific facility or door where relevant, the date, the time window, and whether that window is an appointment, a delivery window, or first come first served. Then the appointment number if one exists.
Why appointment type matters more than the time itself: if free time starts at the scheduled appointment and the carrier arrives 90 minutes early, the carrier is not accruing detention during that 90 minutes. If free time starts at arrival, it is. Those two clauses produce different invoices from identical facts. Spell out which one applies, in words, on the rate con. The full mechanics are in when detention free time starts.
The detention block itself needs four numbers and one sentence:
- Free time per stop, stated in hours.
- Trigger event: arrival, check-in, appointment time, or signed-in-at-guard-shack.
- Increment: 15-minute, 30-minute, or hourly, and whether partial increments round up.
- Rate and cap: per hour, maximum per stop, maximum per day.
- The evidence sentence: detention is payable only when supported by in and out times recorded on the signed delivery receipt or facility check-in record.
That last sentence is the single highest-value line on a rate confirmation. Without it you are relitigating detention charges with no in and out times on the POD on every load. With it, the question stops being “did the driver wait” and becomes “is the document attached,” which is a question a settlement clerk can answer in ten seconds.
Rate, mileage basis and fuel
The linehaul line must state the basis, not just the number. A flat rate for the load is cleanest and it is what most truckload rate cons should use. If you are paying per mile, the rate con must name the mileage engine, its version, the routing option, and whether mileage runs zip-to-zip or dock-to-dock. A per-mile rate without a named mileage basis is not a rate, it is the start of a negotiation, and the gap between two common routing engines on the same lane is real money.
Fuel must be resolved one way or the other, explicitly. Either the rate is all-in and the rate con says “all-in, no fuel surcharge in addition,” or fuel is separate and the rate con names the index source, the region, which survey week applies to which shipping days, the peg, and the increment. The EIA On-Highway Diesel Fuel Price Survey captures pump prices as of 8:00 a.m. local Monday and publishes around 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, broken out by PADD region plus national and California, which is why “which week” is a real question and not a technicality. If you settle carrier fuel separately, the DOE index week and effective date is the ambiguity to close on the document.
Ambiguous fuel language is a margin problem specific to brokers: you quoted the shipper all-in and the carrier bills fuel on top. That gap comes straight out of margin, every time, and it is entirely preventable with one sentence.
The accessorial schedule and the authorization rule
List the accessorials you will pay and price them. The standard practitioner taxonomy covers what actually appears on invoices: liftgate, redelivery, layover, reclassification and reweigh, advance notification, limited access, lumper and driver load-unload, residential, inside delivery, metro pickup and delivery, oversized, sort and segregate, hazmat, after-hour delivery, truck ordered not used, diversion miles, additional stops, storage, and detention.
You will not price all twenty. Price the six or eight that occur on your freight, and then add the sentence that governs the rest:
No accessorial charge not listed above will be paid unless approved in writing by [Broker] before the service is performed. Approval requests must be sent to [email] and will be answered within [X] hours.
That structure does two things. It gives you a clean basis to decline an unlisted charge, and it gives the carrier a real path to get paid for legitimate extra work. A pre-authorization clause with no responsive approval channel is unfair and it will not survive contact with a driver sitting at a dock. Give the carrier a number to call.
Also state whether fuel applies to accessorials. Silence here reliably produces fuel billed on detention.
Document requirements and the invoicing block
The document list is what makes settlement mechanical.
- Signed bill of lading, clean or with exceptions noted.
- Proof of delivery with in and out times at every stop where detention is claimable.
- Lumper receipt for any reimbursed lumper.
- Scale ticket where weight drives the rate.
- Any photo or exception documentation required for the commodity.
Then the invoicing block: where to send the invoice, what to reference (your load number, always), the submission deadline, and payment terms including any quick-pay option and its fee. State plainly that an invoice missing a required document will be returned rather than short-paid, and that the payment clock starts on receipt of a complete packet. That framing is fair to the carrier and it prevents the “you never paid me” thread that starts from an invoice you never received in usable form.
Two legal clocks are worth knowing when you set these terms. Under 49 U.S.C. 13710, charges additional to those originally billed must be billed within 180 days of receipt of the original bill to preserve collection rights, and a party must contest a bill within 180 days of receipt to preserve its right to challenge. Under 49 CFR 378.8, a written overcharge claim must be paid, declined, or settled within 60 days of receipt absent a written agreement to extend. Those are the outer boundaries; your rate con sets the operating ones inside them, and the full set is mapped in every freight billing deadline with the rule behind it.
Signature, timing and version control
The rate con has to be signed and returned before dispatch. Not after delivery, not with the invoice. A signature returned after the load ran is a receipt, not an agreement.
Three practices that prevent most of the remaining disputes:
Version the document. If terms change mid-load (an added stop, a rate adjustment, a reconsignment), issue a revised rate con with a version number and get it signed. An email chain is worse evidence than a document, and a stop added by phone is a stop that will be argued about.
Timestamp it. Sent time, signed time, dispatched time. When the argument is about whether the carrier knew about a requirement, the timestamps answer it.
Store it with the load, not in an inbox. The rate con, the BOL, the POD, and the invoice belong in one place keyed to the load number. Half of settlement friction is retrieval, not disagreement, and the same retrieval discipline is what makes duplicate freight invoices catchable at all.
The audit pass
Pull five recent rate confirmations from your own system and score each against this list. Not the template, the actual issued documents, because templates drift when someone edits a PDF under time pressure.
- Does every stop show a date, a window, and the appointment type in words?
- Does the detention block name free time, trigger, increment, rate, and the evidence requirement?
- Is the linehaul basis stated, and if per-mile, is the mileage engine and routing option named?
- Is fuel resolved as all-in or separately specified with index, region, week, peg and increment?
- Is there a priced accessorial list plus a pre-authorization sentence with a working approval channel?
- Are the required documents listed, and does the payment clock start on a complete packet?
- Is the carrier’s legal name, MC number and remit-to on the face of the document?
- Was it signed and returned before dispatch, with a timestamp you can produce?
Every “no” on that list is a settlement argument you have already agreed to have. Fixing the template takes an afternoon and stops paying for itself never.
Sources
- 49 CFR 373.101, Motor carrier receipts and bills of lading (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 373.103, Freight or expense bills (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.8, Overcharge claim resolution within 60 days (Cornell LII)
- 49 U.S.C. 13710, Billing and contesting windows (Cornell LII)
- EIA On-Highway Diesel Fuel Price Survey methodology (U.S. Energy Information Administration)
- Top 20 accessorial charges, practitioner taxonomy (Zipline Logistics)
- Freight detention charge disputes: how to win (Laneproof)