Almost everything you can buy spent part of its life on a truck. In the US, trucks carry roughly 70% of freight by weight. The people who own the freight are shippers (a factory, a farm, a warehouse). The people who move it are carriers (trucking companies). The place it goes is the receiver, often called the consignee.
A shipper can hire a carrier directly, or go through a freight broker. A broker doesn't own trucks: it finds a carrier for the load, charges the shipper one rate and pays the carrier a lower one. Many carriers haul both their own contract freight and brokered loads.
Trucking splits a few ways. Truckload (TL) means one shipper's freight fills the trailer, picked up and delivered without stops in between. Less-than-truckload (LTL) mixes many small shipments that move through terminals. Over-the-road (OTR) drivers stay out for one to three weeks; regional drivers run a few states and are home weekly; local drivers are home every night.
The trailer matters too. A dry van is the plain 53-foot box. A reefer is refrigerated, for food and medicine. A flatbed carries steel, lumber and machinery, strapped or chained down and often tarped. Tankers, car haulers and intermodal containers each have their own world.
Drivers come in kinds as well. A company driver drives the carrier's truck for a wage. An owner-operator owns or leases their truck and is in business for themselves, usually leased on to a carrier for a share of the revenue. A team is two drivers in one truck taking turns, so the truck can keep moving almost all day.
A driver manager (also called a fleet manager or DM) is the person at the carrier who looks after a group of drivers: their loads, their hours, their pay questions, their home time and their problems. That's the job this course is about.
On the desk
A company in Ohio needs 40,000 lbs of paper towels moved to a store warehouse in Georgia. It calls a company that finds a truck for it but owns no trucks itself. What is that company?
More info
Terms in this lesson
Shipper
Whoever has the freight and pays to move it.
Consignee
The receiver: where the freight is delivered.
Carrier
A trucking company that hauls freight with its own authority.
Freight broker
Arranges loads between shippers and carriers without owning trucks.
TL / LTL
Truckload (one shipper fills the trailer) and less-than-truckload (many small shipments share it).
OTR, regional, local
Out for weeks, home weekly, home daily.
Dry van, reefer, flatbed
Plain box trailer, refrigerated trailer, open deck for big or heavy freight.
Owner-operator
A driver who owns or leases their truck and is usually leased on to a carrier.
Team
Two drivers sharing one truck to keep it moving.
The scenario answers
A company in Ohio needs 40,000 lbs of paper towels moved to a store warehouse in Georgia. It calls a company that finds a truck for it but owns no trucks itself. What is that company? A freight broker. A broker arranges the move and earns the difference between what the shipper pays and what the carrier gets. The carrier is whoever actually hauls it, and the consignee is the Georgia warehouse.
A load of frozen chicken has to stay at 0°F from pickup to delivery. Which trailer does it need? Reefer. A reefer is a refrigerated trailer with its own diesel-powered cooling unit. A dry van has no temperature control.
Your carrier wants trucks moving close to 20 hours a day on long lanes, like Los Angeles to New Jersey. What usually makes that possible? Team drivers. One driver can legally drive at most 11 hours a day. Two drivers taking turns let the truck keep going while one sleeps.
Which driver is in business for themselves and usually gets a percentage of each load's revenue? An owner-operator. Owner-operators run their own business, pay for their own fuel and repairs, and are usually paid a share of the load's revenue. Company drivers are paid by the mile, the hour or a percentage, with the carrier covering the truck.
General training, not legal or compliance advice. Rules are the US federal ones (FMCSA) as of 2026; check the current text and your company’s policies.