Shipping abbreviations
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The short forms that fill a quotation, a booking confirmation and a bill of lading.
A quotation is mostly initials
Freight paperwork is written in abbreviations, and nobody explains them because everyone in the trade already knows. That is fine until you are the one holding the quotation and trying to work out whether THC is included and what O/F stands for.
This is the working set — the ones that actually appear on Malaysian export and import documents. Grouped by where you will meet them rather than alphabetically, because that is how you will need to look them up.
How the cargo is sold,
These decide the shape of the shipment before anything is loaded.
Load and route
What you are buying
FCL
Full container load — the whole box is yours.
LCL
Less than container load — part of a container, shared.
POL
Port of loading — where it sails from.
POD
Port of discharge, or destination — where it lands.
SSL
Shipping line — the carrier operating the vessel.
R/O
Routing order — instructions on how the cargo is to be routed.
Best for
The first five lines of almost every booking confirmation.
Cargo and measure
What is being moved
COMM
Commodity — what the goods actually are.
DIM
Dimensions — length, width and height as packed.
VOL
Volume.
CBM
Cubic metre (m³) — the unit sea freight is priced against.
FT
Feet — as in a 20-foot or 40-foot box.
Best for
The figures your rate is calculated from. See the CBM guide for the arithmetic.
The box,
Container types are usually written as a size plus one of these codes — 40HC, 20DC.
Equipment
The box itself
CNTR
Container.
DC
Dry container — a standard general-purpose box.
HC
High cube — the taller version, 2.90 m external.
Best for
Combined with a size: 20DC, 40HC. See the container guide for dimensions.
Charges and time
What appears on the invoice
O/F
Ocean freight — the sea leg itself.
A/F
Air freight.
THC
Terminal handling charges — the terminal’s own fee, at each end.
FUL
Fuel — the fuel surcharge element.
SEC
Security — the security surcharge.
F.T
Free time — the days before demurrage or detention starts.
T.T
Transit time — how long the journey takes.
Best for
THC, FUL and SEC are the three most often left out of a headline rate.
Which piece of paper
Ocean shipments get bills of lading; air shipments get airway bills. Each comes in a master and a house version.
Sea documents
Bills of lading
B/L
Bill of lading — receipt, contract of carriage, and sometimes title.
MBL
Master bill of lading — issued by the shipping line to the forwarder.
HBL
House bill of lading — issued by the forwarder to the shipper.
Best for
The HBL is the one an exporter usually holds. See the bill of lading guide.
Air documents
Airway bills
MAWB
Master airway bill — issued by the airline to the forwarder.
HAWB
House airway bill — issued by the forwarder to the shipper.
Best for
The same master-and-house structure as sea, different paper.
Who bears
These come from the sales contract rather than the transport booking, and everything else follows from them.
Trade terms
Agreed before the freight is booked
INCOTERMS
International Commercial Terms — the ICC rules dividing cost and risk between seller and buyer.
T.O.S
Term of shipping — the agreed Incoterm for that shipment.
FOB
Free on board — one of the most-used Incoterms; the buyer takes over once the goods are on board.
Best for
Get these agreed first. The freight term on the bill has to match them.
Two of these look identical and are not
FT and F.T
FT is feet. F.T is free time.
A 40 FT box and 5 F.T days are two entirely different things, written almost the same way, and both appear on the same booking confirmation. Read them in context: a number in front means feet, a number of days after means free time. If a document is ambiguous, ask — it is the difference between the size of the container and how long you have to collect it.
Shipping abbreviations — the one-page version
The whole guide on a single sheet, sized for WhatsApp and for A4. Ours to give away.