Seal number

The seal is a numbered plastic or metal strap through the trailer’s door latch. The shipper applies it when loading is complete, writes the number on the bill of lading, and the driver confirms it. At delivery the receiver compares the number on the door with the number on the paperwork before breaking the seal. Food, pharmaceutical and high-value shippers treat a seal discrepancy as a rejected load; some will not unload a trailer that arrives with no seal at all.

For a broker, the seal number is a field to make sure is on the BOL and matches the POD. Seal issues cause more rejected loads than they cause actual theft, and most are clerical: the number was transcribed wrong, a second seal was applied at a stop and not recorded, or the driver resealed after an inspection without telling anyone. The record on the paperwork is what the argument comes down to.

On a document-reading system, the seal number is a short alphanumeric string next to other short alphanumeric strings, and it is one of the fields worth a confidence score and a human glance.