The EDI 204 · Motor Carrier Load Tender is the document a shipper or broker sends when freight needs a truck and a carrier has to decide — accept the load or refuse it, usually fast. Where the 850 · Purchase Order asks a supplier to sell goods, the 204 asks a carrier to commit capacity: a specific shipment, at specific pickup and delivery points, inside specific time windows. The carrier's answer comes back in the 990 · Response to a Load Tender, and once accepted, the tender becomes the contract the rest of the freight documents are measured against.

That decision window is what makes the 204 unforgiving. A tender that sits unread, or is read with a wrong weight, a wrong appointment time, or a wrong stop sequence, does not just create paperwork noise — it puts the wrong truck in the wrong place, or no truck at all, on the day the freight has to move.

What is the EDI 204 · Motor Carrier Load Tender?

The 204 is an X12 transaction set a shipper, broker, or 3PL uses to tender a shipment to a motor carrier.…