What Is a Split Load?
A split load is one pickup delivered to more than one destination. A truck loads once — say 8,000 gallons of diesel — and drops 3,000 at one customer, 3,000 at another and 2,000 at a third.
It is the efficient shape for a lane with several small customers, and it is the shape that most often breaks software written for one-load-one-delivery.
Why split loads exist
Truck capacity is fixed and customer demand is not. A tank that needs 2,500 gallons cannot justify its own trip, but three such tanks on the same route can share one. Splitting the load turns three uneconomic deliveries into one profitable run.
The allocation problem
The complication is that the volume loaded and the volume delivered are measured separately, and they will not agree exactly. Temperature, metering tolerance, and the residual left in the trailer all move the number — see gross vs net gallons.
So on a split load, someone has to decide how the loaded volume maps onto the drops. In practice the first stops are delivered to plan and the last stop absorbs whatever is actually left, which is why the final customer on a split load is the one whose invoice varies.
Each drop still needs its own delivery ticket, its own signature and its own invoice line, because each is a separate commercial transaction — even though all three trace back to one bill of lading.
Split load vs multi-stop pickup
These are opposites and are constantly confused.
| Split load | Multi-stop pickup | |
|---|---|---|
| Pickups | One | Several |
| Drops | Several | Usually one |
| Paperwork | One BOL, several delivery tickets | Several BOLs, one delivery ticket |
| Why | Customers too small for a full load | Products stored at different terminals |
A single order can be both: two pickups feeding three drops. That is where systems built around one document per load stop being able to represent reality at all.
What to watch
- Drop sequence is a routing and a commercial decision. Whoever is last carries the variance.
- A zero-allocation stop is a data error. A drop assigned nothing on a split load usually means the split was entered wrong, not that a customer ordered nothing.
- Carrier disclosure. On brokered work, a carrier may not be entitled to see who the other drops belong to.
How Energy Connect handles it
Split loads are modelled directly: one order, per-line allocations across stops, per-stop delivery status, and delivery progress across the run. Invoices reconcile per drop against what that stop actually received, and stop identities stay masked from a carrier until acceptance.