Week one is not about service. It is about agreeing whose paper governs before the first load moves.
Key takeaways
Week one with a new shipper is administrative, and that is the point. Three things have to be true before the first load moves: you both know whose terms govern, the compliance documents have been exchanged in both directions, and the billing setup is correct enough that the first invoice does not sit in a queue for a month. Everything else — service, relationship, growth — is easier once those are settled and much harder if they are not.
Below is a week-one sequence that a small carrier can run without a contracts department.
The default position is set federally and points at a province. The conditions of carriage and limitations of liability that apply to transport by an extra-provincial truck undertaking are those set out in the laws of the province in which the transport originates, and where a province has no such enactment, they are those agreed to by the undertaking. So the first question in onboarding is a factual one: where do this customer’s loads start?
Then look at the bill of lading, because in several provinces it is not a form you design. In British Columbia, if freight is accepted for shipment by or on behalf of a carrier operating a business vehicle, the carrier must at the time of acceptance issue a bill of lading showing the name and address of the consignor, the date of the shipment, the originating point, the name of the originating carrier, the name and address of the consignee, the destination if different, and particulars of the goods including weight and description. It must also contain a provision stipulating whether the goods are received in apparent good order and condition, a space to show the declared value of the shipment, and a statement of notice of claim as provided for by Articles 12a and 12b of the Specified Conditions of Carriage, and it must be signed by the consignor or the consignor’s agent and the originating carrier or that carrier’s agent and must contain or incorporate by reference all the conditions of carriage set out in Schedule 3.
If the shipper sends a purchase order or a transport agreement with its own terms and you send back a rate confirmation with yours, you have created a battle of the forms, which is a poor thing to discover during a claim. Resolve it in week one: one document, signed, that says which terms apply. If you are signing electronically, know how electronic signature works on a commercial contract.
Send it before it is asked for. The pack is the same one you keep for RFQs, with current dates:
The operating credential — in Ontario, evidence that you hold a valid CVOR certificate and carry it or a copy in each commercial motor vehicle operated under it; for extra-provincial work, the safety fitness certificate contemplated by the Motor Carrier Safety Fitness Certificate Regulations under the Motor Vehicle Transport Act.
The insurance certificate, naming the right entity. The workers’ compensation clearance — in Ontario, a WSIB clearance is a unique number showing the business is registered and up to date, valid for all your contracts and valid for up to 90 days; in British Columbia, a WorkSafeBC clearance letter. Put the expiry in a calendar on the day you send it.
And, if the account crosses the border, your carrier code — the 4-character unique identifier the CBSA issues to carriers and freight forwarders — plus a decision about who transmits the advance data and by which channel.
Week-one checklist
Governing terms agreed in one signed document · bill of lading form confirmed against the originating province · compliance packet sent with expiry dates diarised · appointment and free-time definitions in writing · accessorial schedule attached · named operational and accounts contacts on both sides · POD delivery method set · invoicing and tax details confirmed · records location decided.
This is where most of the future arguments are prevented. Four items, all in writing:
Appointment and free-time definitions. When does the clock start — arrival at the gate, check-in, or door assignment? How much free time, and at what rate afterwards? Detention disputes are almost always definition disputes.
The accessorial schedule. Every charge you will ever raise, listed once, with the trigger stated. Charges invented later feel like penalties.
Named contacts and escalation. One operational contact, one accounts contact, one escalation for each side, with hours. “Dispatch” is not a contact.
Document delivery. How the signed delivery document reaches them, in what format, how fast. If you can commit to same-day scanning, commit to it — it is the single most-requested thing you will ever supply.
Confirm the legal entity, the address, the tax treatment and where the invoice actually goes. Then decide where the paperwork lives, because the retention clocks start immediately and they are longer than most people expect.
Tax records run six years: under the Income Tax Act, records must be kept until the expiration of six years from the end of the last taxation year to which they relate, and for GST/HST the Excise Tax Act requires records to be retained until the expiration of six years after the end of the year to which they relate. Bills of lading have their own rule in British Columbia: each must be issued in triplicate or more, with one copy retained by the carrier for at least 3 years and made available for inspection by the director or a peace officer.
Decide once whether that is a folder structure, the TMS, or an accounting system, and make the delivery-document workflow write into it automatically. Retrofitting a filing convention across two years of loads is a genuinely miserable project.
A nine-truck Ontario carrier wins a food-manufacturing account with loads originating in Ontario and Quebec. Week one runs like this.
Monday: confirm origins, confirm the bill of lading form for each originating province, and ask which of the shipper’s documents they consider to govern. Tuesday: send the compliance packet, diarise the clearance expiry ninety days out, and get the insurance certificate reissued naming the correct entity. Wednesday: agree free time at each of the two plants in writing, along with the accessorial schedule and a named contact each side. Thursday: set up billing, confirm the tax treatment, and set the delivery-document workflow to email the scan on the same day. Friday: one page back to the customer summarising all of it, asking them to confirm by reply.
The first load moves the following Monday. The single page from Friday is the document everyone refers to for the next two years.
Onboarding is document work, which is where this technology is genuinely strong. Extracting the shipper’s terms into a clause-by-clause comparison against your own. Building the accessorial matrix from the signed schedule so dispatch cannot invent charges. Chasing the certificate that has not come back. Watching the expiry dates and telling you thirty days out.
What it must not do is agree a term, accept a liability clause, or sign anything. A person reads the difference the tool surfaced and decides.
A rate confirmation prices a load; it does not usually settle liability, detention, indemnity or term. Where those are unsettled, the conditions of carriage of the originating province fill part of the gap and argument fills the rest. One signed page beats both.
Raise it in week one rather than at the first claim. Some prescribed content is not something the parties can quietly drop, and where the documents conflict you are into battle-of-the-forms territory. This is the point to take advice, not after a load is destroyed.
Before the first load, with the rest of the packet, so it reads as routine rather than as suspicion. It is also the natural moment to agree payment terms in the same document as the rate.
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