Drop trailer
Also: Drop and hook · Trailer pool · Drop-and-hook freight
A drop trailer is a trailer the carrier leaves at a shipper or receiver to be loaded or unloaded later, so the driver can hook another trailer and leave instead of waiting at the dock; drop-and-hook freight moves faster and rarely incurs detention but requires a trailer pool.
Live loading means the driver backs into the door and waits while the freight goes on. Drop-and-hook means the shipper loaded a trailer on its own schedule, the driver arrives, drops the empty trailer he brought, hooks the loaded one and leaves in twenty minutes.
Shippers with steady volume run trailer pools for this reason, and carriers price drop freight lower per mile than live freight because it wastes fewer hours. Detention almost never applies to a drop, which also removes the most common source of disputes on the lane.
The cost is equipment. A trailer pool of ten trailers at a shipper is ten trailers not earning revenue on the road, so drop programs are the province of larger carriers and dedicated fleets. Owner-operators and small fleets generally do live loads.
On a rate confirmation, “drop” versus “live” at each stop tells the carrier what to bring and how long the stop will take, and it changes what a broker expects from tracking: a drop pickup should show the truck on site for minutes, not hours, and a truck sitting at a drop yard for two hours is itself a signal that something is wrong.
Related terms
Updated September 11, 2026 · All terms