Glossary
The freight terms these docs and the API use, in plain words.
Shipments and containers
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| FCL | Full container load: your cargo fills a whole container, and you pay per container. Priced with GET /rate-search. |
| LCL | Less than container load: your cargo shares a container with others, and you pay for the space it takes. Priced with POST /contracts/lcl-rates. |
| Container sizes | 20' and 40' are the standard lengths in feet. 40'HC (high cube) is a 40' that is a foot taller, 9'6". 45' is used on some ocean trades; 48' and 53' are mostly for North American inland moves. The API writes sizes as 20, 40, 40HC, 45, 48, 53 in requests, and as 20', 40' HC and so on in rates. |
| Container type | What kind of box: Dry (general cargo), Reefer (refrigerated), Tank, Open top and others. |
| TEU | Twenty-foot equivalent unit: one 20' container. A 40' counts as two. |
| CBM | Cubic meter, the unit LCL volume is measured in. |
| Revenue ton (RT), W/M | How LCL is charged: the larger of the volume in CBM and the weight in metric tons (1,000 kg). 4.5 CBM weighing 1,200 kg is 4.5 RT. Also written W/M, weight or measure. |
Places and routes
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| UN/LOCODE | The five-character code for a port or place: two letters for the country, three for the place. USCHI is Chicago and CNSGH is Shanghai. Look them up with GET /unlocations. |
| IATA code | The three-letter code for an airport, such as ORD for Chicago O'Hare. Look them up with GET /unlocations/iata_codes. |
| Origin, destination | Where the rate starts and ends. On an ocean rate, these can be inland points as well as ports. |
Via (originVia, destinationVia) | A port or place the container passes through. Chicago is inland, so a Chicago to Shanghai rate goes by rail to a port such as Norfolk (USORF) and sails from there. |
| Rail ramp | An inland rail terminal where containers move between truck and train, such as Chicago's. |
| Inland leg | A contract's price from an inland city to a port, added to the ocean rate from that port. Ask for these with includeInlandLegs=true. Contracts also call them arbitraries. |
| Service: CY/CY, CY/DOOR, DOOR/CY, DOOR/DOOR | Where the carrier takes and hands over the container: at the container yard (CY, the port or terminal) or at a door (an address). CY/CY is port to port. |
| Door, door pickup, door delivery | An address the container is trucked to or from. Set isOriginDoorDelivery or isDestDoorDelivery on a route to price that truck leg. |
Rates and prices
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Contract rate | A price your organization agreed with a carrier, for a lane, a container size and a period. Rate search prices these. |
| Carrier | The shipping line that moves the container, such as ZIM. LCL rates come from consolidators, who fill shared containers. |
| Lane | An origin and destination pair, such as Chicago to Shanghai. |
| Rate group | One row of a contract: a lane, routing and service, with its price per container size. Each rate search result names its group in extracted_group_id. |
| Commodity, FAK | What the cargo is. FAK (freight all kinds) covers general cargo with one price. |
| Effective, expiration | The dates a rate can be booked. |
| Base rate, ocean freight | The price of moving the container, before surcharges. |
| Remarks | The contract's own conditions on a rate, such as cargo it excludes. |
Surcharges
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Surcharge | A charge on top of the base rate: for fuel, terminal handling, a currency or a season. Each has a short code. The codes are the carrier's own; well-known ones include BAF (bunker, that is fuel) and THC (terminal handling). |
| Tariff | A carrier's published price list. For trades to and from the US, carriers file theirs with the FMC (Federal Maritime Commission). Many surcharges are priced from it. |
| Fixed contract surcharge | A surcharge whose amount the contract itself sets, so it can be priced without a tariff. |
| Counted, unpriced | In a price breakdown, a counted charge is in the total. An unpriced charge applies under the contract but has no price yet (for example, no tariff covers the route), so it isn't in the total. A rate with unpriced charges has pricingComplete: false. |
| Future surcharges, subject to | Charges filed to start later, and charges that apply only in special circumstances. Both are listed but not in today's total. |
Trucking
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Drayage | Trucking a container a short distance, between a port or rail ramp and an address. |
| Accessorial | An extra trucking charge. Some are always in the total, such as a fuel surcharge (FSC) set as a percentage. Others depend on what happens on the day, such as chassis rental (CHS) per day or waiting time (WTG) per hour, so they're listed but not in the total. |
| Chassis | The trailer frame a container sits on for the road. |
Quotes
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quote | Rates you send a customer, numbered (Q-000001), with an ACCEPT link. Made with POST /rate-search/export and a customer_id. |
| Rate sheet | The same export without a customer: a plain workbook, not a quote. |
| Buy, sell, margin | What a rate costs you, what the customer pays, and the difference. |
| Requote | A new quote for the same request, when a customer asks for updated rates. |
The API itself
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sandbox | The test environment, api-dev.highqube.ai, with test data and test keys (hq_test_…). |
| API key | Your organization's credential, sent as Authorization: Bearer <key>. See API keys. |
| Scope (permission) | What a key may do: rates:read, quotes:read, quotes:write. |
| Idempotency key | A value you send with a quote export so a retry can't file it twice. See Retrying safely. |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol, how AI assistants call tools. See Use with AI assistants. |
