Writing Shipping Instructions Your Suppliers Will Actually Follow

If your inbound freight keeps arriving on the wrong carrier, with no packing slip, on skids labelled with nothing but a PO number, the problem usually isn’t careless suppliers — it’s instructions that were never written to be followed. A shipping instructions document works when it is short, specific, easy to find, and checked at receiving. This post covers what belongs in one, what to cut, and how to get real compliance without turning every order into an argument.

Why most shipping instructions get ignored

Most supplier shipping instructions fail for a simple reason: they were written for a contract file, not a shipping desk. Three pages of legal boilerplate stapled to a purchase order never reaches the person wrapping the skid at four o’clock on a Friday.

The common failure modes are worth naming, because the fixes follow directly from them:

• Too long. Anything past one page gets skimmed, then ignored.
• Buried. Instructions embedded in PO terms and conditions are invisible to warehouse staff who never see the PO.
• Vague. “Package appropriately for transit” tells a shipper nothing. “One SKU per skid, stretch-wrapped to the pallet, max 60 inches tall” tells them everything.
• Unenforced. If nobody ever mentions a miss, suppliers reasonably conclude the document doesn’t matter.

A useful test: could a new employee at your supplier’s shipping desk follow the document without calling anyone? If not, rewrite it.

The sections that earn their place

A working instructions document covers six things. Each should be a few lines, not a few paragraphs.

Ship-to and receiving details. The exact delivery address including unit number, receiving hours, dock or no dock, and whether an appointment is required. If your receiving door is around the back of the building or your dock requires a specific approach, say so — drivers who have never been to your facility rely on exactly this.

Carrier and routing. Who books the freight and who pays for it. If you route your own inbound — often the cheaper and more controllable option, as covered in our guide to inbound freight routing for buyers — name the carrier to call, the account to reference, and when the supplier must contact you before booking anything themselves.

Labelling. What every skid and carton must show: your company name, the PO number, piece count (“1 of 3”), and any receiving codes you use. Two labels per skid, on adjacent faces, is a reasonable standard — our post on B2B shipping label practices goes deeper on placement and format.

Packaging and palletization. Skid footprint and height limits, one-PO-per-skid rules if you have them, stretch-wrap expectations, and anything your receiving equipment can’t handle — if you unload with a pallet jack only, say that double-stacked or overhung skids will be refused.

Paperwork. Packing slip on the outside of the freight in a pouch, referencing the PO. What must appear on the bill of lading, including your PO number in the reference field so receiving can match the shipment without opening it.

Exceptions. Who to contact — a role and an email, not a person’s name that goes stale — when something can’t comply: an oversize piece, a partial shipment, a substitution.

Write it like a checklist, not a contract

Instructions written in the imperative get followed; instructions written in contract language get filed. “Label both skid faces with the PO number” beats “Supplier shall ensure adequate identification of all shipping units.” Keep sentences short, use numbers and limits instead of adjectives, and format the document so it works printed and pinned to a wall — because at your best suppliers, that’s exactly where it will end up.

One page is the discipline that makes everything else work. If the document is growing past that, you’re probably restating things that belong in the purchase agreement (liability, incoterms, chargeback policy) rather than things the shipping desk needs at pack-out time. Reference those documents; don’t reproduce them.

Put it where the shipping desk will see it

A routing document only works if it travels to the right people, and the right people are rarely the ones who signed the supply agreement. Send it with supplier onboarding, attach it to every new PO as a separate file with an obvious name, and re-send it whenever your details change. When a new supplier’s first shipment is coming up, a two-minute call to their shipping desk to walk through the document does more for compliance than any clause you could write.

Date every version and retire old ones explicitly. A supplier following your 2023 instructions in good faith is a document-control failure on your side, not a compliance failure on theirs.

If a supplier ships to you from more than one site, or through a distributor or broker, confirm which location actually books the freight and send the document there directly. The head office that holds your contract and the regional warehouse that loads your skids are often different buildings in different provinces, and instructions mailed to one rarely migrate to the other on their own.

Close the loop at receiving

Compliance is created at your receiving door, not at the supplier’s. Have receiving staff note misses — wrong carrier, missing packing slip, unlabelled skids, freight arriving outside your stated hours — in whatever log you already keep. You’re not building a court case; you’re building a pattern you can raise factually: “Four of your last six shipments arrived without the PO on the label.”

Feed that pattern back through your buyer to the supplier’s account contact. Most suppliers fix things quickly once someone who owns the relationship hears about it, because the misses were never intentional — the document just never made it to the floor.

Where your carrier fits in

Instructions get dramatically easier to write when the inbound freight rides with a carrier you control. If a supplier ships to you weekly, putting that lane on a scheduled route means the same driver, the same pickup window and the same paperwork expectations every time — the supplier’s shipping desk learns the routine once, and the instructions document shrinks to labelling and packaging rules. It also means that when something does go wrong, you’re talking to your carrier about your freight, not asking a supplier to chase theirs.

Sonic Transport runs exactly this kind of recurring B2B work across the GTA, Golden Horseshoe and Southern Ontario, with a person who knows your account handling the lane. If you’re tightening up inbound shipping from your suppliers, tell us about the lanes you want to control and we’ll price the routing.