Shipper, consignee and driver details in freight records

What personal data sits inside a freight record?#

A freight record carries personal data in three places: the parties on the shipment, the people who handled it and the equipment that tracked it. A bill of lading lists shipper and consignee contacts, a delivery appointment carries a receiving clerk's name and phone, and a load record names the driver, the truck and often the driver's cell number.

Residential and final-mile freight adds a homeowner's name, address and delivery instructions. Proof of delivery adds a signature and sometimes a photo of the doorstep. Telematics adds a continuous location trace for the truck, which is also a trace of the person driving it.

Most of the operational value sits elsewhere: the lane, the commodity, the weight and cube, the appointment window, the exception code, what the team did about it and how long it took. That split is what makes freight records good candidates for careful preparation.

TMS and WMS field map#

The field map below covers the common fields in a TMS, WMS and telematics export and a default treatment for each. Field names vary across McLeod, other TMS platforms, WMS tools and EDI documents, but the decisions carry over.

Why driver records carry their own rules#

Driver records carry their own rules because they exist for regulatory compliance and contain employment and medical details. FMCSA guidance says carriers must keep drivers' records of duty status and supporting documents for six months, and it lists bills of lading, itineraries and schedules among those supporting documents. Its ELD guidance adds that carriers must store these records in a manner that protects driver privacy.

Driver qualification files go further. Under 49 CFR 391.51, each file is retained for as long as the carrier employs the driver and for three years after, and it includes items such as motor vehicle record inquiries and medical examiner's certificates. Those files, hours-of-service logs and drug and alcohol testing records stay out of any licensed package.

Dash cam video belongs in the same category. Samsara's camera privacy article says video is generally uploaded to its cloud only when there is a safety event or a manual request, so the cloud archive is made of incidents involving identifiable drivers. Exclude it, and keep the event type and outcome only if counsel agrees.

Why GPS traces need coarsening, not just removing names#

GPS traces need coarsening because a route identifies its driver even after the name is gone. Research on mobility data by de Montjoye and colleagues found that four spatio-temporal points were enough to uniquely identify 95% of individuals in a large dataset of hourly, cell-tower-level locations, and concluded that even coarse datasets provide little anonymity.

Truck traces are usually more precise than that. A trace that starts each morning at the same residential street and ends each evening at the same place points to a driver's home. Keep the lane as an origin and destination city pair, round timestamps to the hour, and drop the breadcrumb trail unless a buyer specifically needs route behavior and counsel has approved the treatment.

How should business consignees be handled?#

Business consignees should be coded, because their names reveal your customers' customers, which shippers often treat as confidential. A distribution center's name next to a commodity and a lane can expose a supply relationship that neither party has made public.

Code each consignee consistently across the dataset and add an industry and facility type, such as grocery distribution center or construction site. That keeps patterns such as recurring detention at one receiver without naming the receiver. Check shipper contracts and broker-carrier agreements for confidentiality clauses that cover shipment data before deciding what can be licensed at all.

Illustrative: a regional 3PL prepares its exception history#

Illustrative: a fictional regional 3PL runs a WMS for its warehouses, a TMS for brokered and asset loads, and Samsara telematics on its own fleet. Leadership wants to license several years of delivery exceptions and the notes that show how each was resolved.

The team codes every shipper, consignee and carrier, generalizes business addresses to city and residential addresses to ZIP code, and removes contacts, driver names and phone numbers from exception notes. Driver qualification files, hours-of-service logs, proof-of-delivery photos and dash cam events are excluded entirely. GPS data is reduced to city pairs and hourly event times.

The resulting package keeps the full chain of each exception: the event, the cause, the calls and decisions, and the outcome. The COO approves it after a dispatcher's sample review finds no driver or residential customer that could be picked out from context.

A preparation checklist for freight records#

A preparation checklist keeps operations, IT and compliance working from the same list. Run it once on a sample before extracting the full scope.

• 1Confirm which customer contracts and carrier agreements restrict use of shipment data.
• 2List every system in scope: TMS, WMS, telematics, EDI archives, email and shared inboxes.
• 3Apply the field map and record the treatment for each field.
• 4Exclude driver files, hours-of-service records, testing records, POD images and dash cam video.
• 5Scan exception and dispatch notes for names, phone numbers and residential addresses.
• 6Check that coded shippers, consignees and carriers still join across files.
• 7Have a dispatcher review a sample for drivers or customers recognizable from context.

How SourceX approaches freight datasets#

SourceX handles freight records through the SourceX five-step transaction: the Rights step reviews customer and carrier agreements, and the Preparation step applies the field map before the supplier's Approval. The field treatments and exclusions are recorded in the privacy record of the SourceX Evidence Packet, and large telematics archives can stay in the supplier's own storage.