Shipping location types

The following are the types of shipping locations:

Consignee
Distribution center
Load-at
Hub

Much of the data maintained is similar for all types of shipping locations. The properties of different types of shipping locations are used by the routing/rating/scheduling process.

Consignee

Consignees are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the destination point of a shipment. The other two types are hubs and distribution centers.

A Consignee would normally be used to define a potential destination shipping point for a physical location over which your organization has no direct control. Furthermore, a consignee is never defined as an intermediate point for a shipment.

Note: A location normally used as a consignee might also need to be defined as a Load-At to allow for proper handling of returns.

Distribution center

A distribution center is a shipping point (such as a warehouse) that is owned or controlled by your company. Unlike a third party load-at or consignee, you can determine the activities that take place in your own distribution centers.

Distribution Centers are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the origin point of a shipment. The other two are hubs and load-ats. Distribution Centers are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the destination point of a shipment. The other two are hubs and consignees.

A Distribution Center could be manually assigned as the intermediate point for a shipment. Optimization strategies in Transportation Planner will not insert a Distribution Center as a mid-point in the itinerary for a shipment.

Load-at

Load-ats are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the origin point of a shipment. The other two types are hubs and distribution centers.

A Load-At would normally be used to define a potential origin shipping point for a physical location over which your organization has no direct control. Furthermore, a load-at will never be defined as an intermediate point for a shipment.

Note: A location normally used as a load-at might also need to be defined as a Consignee to allow for proper handling of returns.

Hub

A hub (cross dock) is a consolidation and deconsolidation point where shipments can be grouped, and where consolidated shipments can be broken up into individual containers. You must create a hub profile for each hub or cross-dock that your carriers use. Each hub profile will reference exactly one Carrier profile.

Hubs are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the origin point of a shipment. The other two are distribution centers and load-ats. Hubs are one of the three types of shipping location that can be named as the destination point of a shipment. The other two are distribution centers and consignees.

A hub can be manually assigned as the intermediate point for a shipment. Optimization strategies in Transportation Planner will also insert an active hub as a mid-point in the itinerary for a shipment, when appropriate.