TL Rates — CSV Upload

Truckload (TL) carrier contracts are typically priced on a per-mile basis — the freight cost for a shipment is calculated by multiplying the agreed rate per mile by the distance between the origin and destination. To do this, OTM needs to know the distance for every lane it plans.

OTM supports two approaches to sourcing distances:

  • Distance Lookup (manual upload): The business team maintains a table of pre-defined distances between city pairs or zip codes and uploads them into OTM. This is the approach covered in this topic — the DISTANCE_LOOKUP file in the upload sequence stores these values.
  • Third-party distance providers: OTM can integrate with mileage calculation applications such as PC*MILER or MileMaker. When a rate is configured to use one of these providers, OTM calls the external application at runtime to fetch the exact mileage rather than relying on a stored value.
Configuring a third-party distance provider (Rate Distance) is a separate setup topic that will be covered in a future post. The RATE_DISTANCE_GID field in the files below must reference whichever distance source your environment is using — either a lookup table or a third-party provider already configured in OTM.

OTM allows TL rate contracts to be loaded using CSV files instead of manual UI entry. This is the most efficient approach when setting up rates for multiple lanes or carriers.

LTL Rates — CSV Upload

LTL (Less-than-Truckload) rate pricing works differently from TL. Rather than a flat per-mile charge, LTL rates are class-based — the freight cost depends on the shipment’s weight, the distance, and the NMFC freight class of the goods being shipped. Heavier, denser freight falls into lower classes and attracts lower rates; lighter, bulkier freight is assigned higher classes.

In OTM, LTL pricing uses two layers:

  • Base Tariff — a rate offering already loaded in OTM that contains the published class-based rate table (rate per hundredweight by freight class and distance). This tariff is typically loaded once and shared across all carriers that use the same tariff basis.
  • Carrier Rate Offering — the actual contract with a specific carrier, which defines a discount percentage off the base tariff. OTM looks up the class rate from the base tariff, then applies the discount to calculate the final cost.

LTL lanes are also typically defined at a broader geography than TL. Where TL uses city-to-city lanes, LTL carriers often publish rates by origin city to destination state — reflecting how their regional networks are structured.