OTM models carrier contracting across five layers: Service Provider (who moves the freight), Rate Service (transit time commitments), Rate Distance (how mileage is calculated), Rate Offering (the contract), and Rate Records (the actual cost lanes). Understanding this structure is essential for rate setup, planning troubleshooting, and freight cost analysis.

Service Provider:

A Service Provider (carrier) is the party that physically moves freight. They own or manage trucks, containers, trailers, and drivers. They receive tender requests from OTM specifying origin, destination, weight, volume, and shipment dates — and issue invoices once delivery is complete.

Rate Distance in OTM is the calculated distance between a shipment’s origin and destination. OTM needs this distance to cost TL shipments on per-mile rate contracts. There are two ways to provide this distance:

• Distance Lookup — your team pre-loads a table of distances lane by lane. OTM looks up the matching lane and reads the stored mileage. No external system is needed.
• External Distance Engine — OTM calls a third-party routing engine (such as PCMiler from ALK Technologies) at plan time to fetch the live calculated distance. This requires a license and API access to the external system.

The Rate Distance record is linked to the Rate Offering (carrier contract) — whichever approach you configure, you reference it in that field so OTM knows which distance method to use when costing shipments under that contract.