What is Line Haul?

In road freight, line haul is the long leg between two terminals or hubs — one movement, priced as one line, with local pickup and delivery at either end.

Line haul is the leg the rest of the trip is arranged around, and the one no federal rule measures: no motor-carrier regulation sets a distance at which a movement becomes one. What the rules fix is the boundary at either end, and the hours and weight the leg between must fit inside. The rate confirmation prices the leg; the regulation constrains it.

Where the leg shows up on a document

On a rate confirmation, the line haul is the base charge: one origin, one destination, one movement. Truckload quotes it per mile or as a flat lane rate; less-than-truckload builds it from freight class and weight. Everything billed beside it is an accessorial charge, and what a rate confirmation commits you to is the basis of both.

In a system it is usually one word. Load boards and settlement statements write linehaul; tariffs and older paperwork write line haul. Same leg, two spellings; a search on one will not find the other.

On the paperwork it may not be the carrier you hired. A less-than-truckload shipment is three movements — pickup, line haul, delivery — under one bill of lading, and a for-hire, non-exempt motor carrier has to issue a receipt or bill of lading for property tendered for interstate transport^[bol]. Where the middle leg is interlined to somebody else, that document decides who a claim goes to: the receiving and the delivering carrier are liable for loss caused by any carrier over whose line the property moved, and neither may demand a claim in under 9 months or a suit in under 2 years after disallowing one in writing^[carmack].

What the leg costs, and what caps it

The line haul is where a trip's per-mile cost is spent. The American Transportation Research Institute measured the industry-average cost of operating a truck in 2025 at $2.336 a mile, all in^[atri], and a line-haul rate is quoted against a number like that, not against the value of the load. Two federal limits then decide how far that mile runs in a day and how much it carries.

Hours first. A driver may drive 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, inside a 14-hour window that does not pause for loading or waiting^[hos]. On-duty time is capped at 60 hours in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours in 8 consecutive days for a carrier running every day of the week^[hos]. That decides whether a lane is one overnight run, a relay with a driver change at a midpoint, or a team.

Then weight. The maximum gross vehicle weight on the Interstate System is 80,000 pounds, with 34,000 pounds on tandem axles^[weight]. Because the rate buys the movement, not the pallet, the unit cost falls only as the trailer fills — which is why consolidation and a cross-dock transfer sit beside line haul, and why mid-mile planning is a load-building problem before it is a routing one.

Where local work stops and the line haul starts

The regulation draws its line at the driver, not at the freight. A driver working within a 150 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location and released from work within 14 consecutive hours is exempt from keeping records of duty status^[shorthaul]. Past that radius the day is a line-haul day, and the logging obligation changes with it.

The legs at either end have their own names and prices. Local cartage is the pickup or delivery inside a city and its commercial zone, sold by the hour or the stop. A drayage move is the container leg between a terminal and an inland facility, on a clock the terminal owns. What comes back is a backhaul load if it is loaded, deadhead miles if it is not.

The limits of the definition

The contract outranks the dictionary. No tariff defines a line-haul mile. What the rate includes — the fuel surcharge, a stop-off, a reweigh and reclass — is set by the rate confirmation, the tariff or the master agreement; where a definition and the paperwork disagree, the paperwork wins.

The word moves with the mode. In rail, line haul is the movement between terminals rather than switching and terminal service, and those rates and practices answer to the Surface Transportation Board^[rail], not the FMCSA; in a parcel network it is the leg between sort hubs, cut to a sort deadline rather than a driver's day. Shyftbase runs land-based freight — no air, ocean, port or customs work — so the road meaning is the one written here.

A definition is not an implementation. Where line-haul legs join up, what matters is the link between two facilities: which days it runs, its cut-off, its transit time, its cost basis — the ground multi-hub network management covers. Sequencing stops inside one day is a different problem, worked through in what AI routing actually saves. The rest of this vocabulary is in the freight glossary.