Transportation Clerk Job Description

A Transportation Clerk owns the record of every load that leaves or enters a facility. When freight ships, the clerk builds the bill of lading, books the carrier, confirms the pickup window and logs the shipment in the transportation management system (TMS). When freight arrives, the clerk checks what came off the trailer against the manifest, invoice or purchase order and writes shortages or damage on the delivery receipt before the driver pulls away. O*NET's task list for the occupation reads like a shift in this office: preparing bills of lading and shipping orders, contacting carrier representatives with shipping instructions, determining routes or rates, and computing shipping, storage or demurrage charges.

The desk is usually a few steps from the dock. BLS notes that many clerks in this group work in an office inside a warehouse or manufacturing plant and may also spend time on the floor. That proximity is an advantage: a clerk who can walk out and count pallets settles a discrepancy in minutes instead of trading emails with a terminal for a day.

The title covers several different desks. At a manufacturer or distributor, the work leans outbound: tendering loads, printing labels and bills, scheduling dock appointments and chasing proof of delivery. At a carrier terminal, it leans toward freight bills, delivery receipts and exception codes. At a freight forwarder or customs broker, it adds commercial invoices, packing lists and entry paperwork for international moves. The money side is part of the job as well. BLS says these clerks compute freight costs and prepare invoices, which in a shipping office means auditing each carrier bill against the quoted rate and pushing back on liftgate, detention or reclassification charges that should not be there.

Less-than-truckload (LTL) freight has its own rulebook. Each LTL shipment carries a National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) item and class, and the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) warns that outdated classifications can mean unexpected charges plus shipment delays from reclassifications and inspections. NMFTA's changes that took effect on July 19, 2025 updated classification criteria affecting density, handling and liability, and the association told shippers to audit their bills of lading and TMS data. It also described the July update as only Phase 1 of a larger overhaul, with more reclassifications expected in future dockets. For a clerk, the product master file is never finished.

The paper bill now has a digital replacement. NMFTA's Digital LTL Council publishes an electronic bill of lading (eBOL) API standard, currently version 2.1, built to replace paper-based bill of lading processes with data passed directly among shippers, carriers and 3PLs. In that setup the clerk checks the data feeding the bill, such as the carrier's Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC) and a nine-digit postal code, rather than typing a form.

Inventory tracking runs on scanners. According to BLS, clerks may scan barcodes with handheld devices or use RFID scanners, and sensors and tags let electronic tools detect when and where products move without a manual count. The clerk's value is in knowing what to do when the scan and the paperwork disagree.

Education. BLS lists a high school diploma or equivalent as the typical entry credential for this family of clerks, with training done on the job. An associate degree or certificate in logistics or supply chain management helps someone who plans to move toward a planner, buyer or transportation analyst role, but treat it as an accelerator rather than a gate.

Experience. Plan on zero to two years of prior work for an entry clerk role. Receiving, warehouse, customer service and general office jobs all transfer well. Someone who has worked a dock already knows what a short-shipped pallet or a crushed carton looks like, which makes the paperwork side faster to learn. For forwarder and customs desks, a year or two in an import or export operation is the usual starting point.

Systems. Expect to learn the employer's TMS (SAP Transportation Management, Oracle Transportation Management, MercuryGate or a carrier's in-house platform), a warehouse management system, and each major carrier's booking and tracking portal. Get comfortable with EDI concepts: load tenders going out, shipment status messages coming back, and freight invoices arriving for audit. Expect Excel for the daily shipping log, the exception list and freight bill reconciliation.

Freight knowledge. Learn the anatomy of a bill of lading (shipper, consignee, piece count, weight, NMFC item and class, special instructions), how density drives LTL class, common accessorial charges, prepaid versus collect terms, and how to read a carrier's rules tariff. International desks add Incoterms, commercial invoice requirements and certificates of origin.

Safety. BLS notes that workers in this group learn safety rules during training, many of them standardized through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Clerks who spend time on the dock should know forklift traffic patterns and proper lifting technique.

Qualities. BLS highlights communication, customer-service, detail and math skills for these clerks, with math used for tasks such as calculating shipping costs. Build the habit of calling a carrier the moment a status looks wrong instead of waiting for the customer to notice.

Credentials. None are needed to get hired as a clerk, but two are worth knowing for the path ahead:

• Certified Customs Specialist (CCS), awarded by the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA), for clerks working import desks.
• Licensed Customs Broker, a license issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for those who want to prepare and file entries themselves.

The federal projection points down. BLS projects employment of Shipping, Receiving, and Inventory Clerks, the occupation that covers transportation clerks, to fall from 827,700 jobs in 2025 to 765,000 in 2035, a decline of 8 percent or 62,800 positions. The Occupational Outlook Handbook ties the decline to warehouse technology: as e-commerce grows, companies are expanding automated storage and retrieval tools, and technologies such as RFID tags and collaborative robots are expected to make warehouse operations more efficient and reduce demand for material recording clerks.

A shrinking occupation still hires. BLS projects about 98,600 openings a year for material recording clerks, the broader group that includes shipping and receiving clerks, and expects all of those openings to come from replacing workers who transfer to other occupations or leave the labor force. For a job seeker, that means vacancies come from turnover rather than expansion.

Where the jobs sit matters for pay. Among material recording clerks, some of the largest employers were manufacturing (28 percent), transportation and warehousing (14 percent), retail trade (14 percent) and wholesale trade (13 percent). In May 2025, the group's median wage was $47,990 in transportation and warehousing and $39,290 in retail trade. Those are figures for the whole clerk group, not transportation clerks alone, but they show the spread by setting.

The clerk seat is also a launch point. BLS says material recording clerks may advance to positions such as purchasing agent with additional training or education. Within logistics, the natural next steps are the desks that price and sell freight. Cargo and Freight Agents, who route and expedite freight shipments, earned a median of $52,260 in May 2025. Production, planning, and expediting clerks, a sibling occupation that schedules materials and chases vendors, had a median of $59,650 in May 2025, and BLS projects its employment to slip only 1 percent over the decade, from 392,100 to 387,100.

The skills that carry a clerk into those roles are judgment skills. Freight bill audit, carrier claims, LTL classification disputes and EDI troubleshooting all require someone who understands both the document and the freight behind it. Clerks who learn their company's carrier contracts, lane volumes and the reasons behind recurring exceptions build the case for a transportation analyst or coordinator title. Those on customs desks can work toward a broker license.

The outlook, in short: fewer seats and hiring driven by replacement. The practical response is to treat the clerk job as training for freight management rather than as a data entry post, and to collect the carrier, billing and classification experience that the next desk up will ask about.

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am applying for the Transportation Clerk opening in your Columbus distribution center. For the past two years I have worked the shipping office at a regional building-products distributor, where I handle outbound paperwork for a dock that ships a mix of LTL and full truckload freight every weekday.

My day starts with the overnight exception list. I trace anything that missed a pickup, rebook it with the carrier, and update the order in our TMS before customer service starts taking calls. After that I build bills of lading for the afternoon wave, check freight classes against our product master, and confirm dock appointments with the warehouse lead so trailers are not stacking up in the yard.

The part of the job I have grown into is freight bill audit. When I started, carrier invoices were approved in batches with little review. I built a simple spreadsheet that matched each bill to the rate we were quoted and flagged reclass and detention charges for a second look. Over my first year that process recovered a meaningful amount in credits, and two carriers corrected the way they were rating our heaviest product line.

I have also learned to walk out to the dock instead of guessing. When a receiving count and a packing list disagree, ten minutes with the pallets usually tells me whether the problem is the shipper, the carrier or our own paperwork.

I am looking for a larger operation with more carrier variety, including intermodal and some export freight, and your posting describes exactly that mix. I would welcome the chance to talk about how I can keep your shipping records clean and your freight spend honest.

Sincerely,

Jordan Alvarez