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How to Read a Fuel Delivery Ticket
A delivery ticket is the record of what actually came off the truck at your site — the product, the quantity discharged, which tank it went into, and when.
It is the document your invoice should be built from. If you only ever check one piece of paper in a fuel delivery, check this one, because it is the only record made at the moment the fuel changed hands.
The fields, and what each one is for
Layouts vary by supplier, and not every ticket carries every field. These are the ones that matter and what to do when one looks wrong.
| Field | What it tells you | If it looks wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered quantity | Metered at the truck as the fuel discharged. This is the billable figure. | Query before paying — this is the number your invoice must match. |
| Gross / net | Measured volume, and volume corrected to 60°F. Some tickets show one, some both. | Check which basis your contract uses. Mixing them is a real cost. |
| Product | Grade and type. On a multi-product drop, a quantity per product. | Wrong grade in a tank is urgent — call before the next draw. |
| Tank or site | Which tank was filled, where you have more than one. | Wrong tank explains an inventory count that will not reconcile. |
| Delivery time | Often start and finish, since discharging takes time. | Matters for demurrage and for unattended-site disputes. |
| Signature | Whoever received it, acknowledging what arrived. | Unsigned is normal at unattended sites — time and site data stand in. |
| BOL reference | Ties this drop back to the load it was lifted on. | Missing makes a short delivery much harder to trace upstream. |
The ticket and the bill of lading are not the same document
They are the two ends of one movement, and confusing them is the usual source of a reconciliation that will not close.
| Bill of lading | Delivery ticket | |
|---|---|---|
| Created | At pickup, at the terminal | At the drop, at your site |
| Records | What went on the truck | What came off it |
| Signed by | The loading terminal and driver | The receiving party |
| Your invoice | Not built from this | Built from this |
One load can produce several delivery tickets. If a truck served more than one customer on the run — a split load — there is one bill of lading and a ticket per stop, each its own transaction.
Three checks worth making every time
- Does the invoice quantity equal the ticket quantity? If the invoice shows a rounder number than the ticket, it was probably built from the order instead of the delivery.
- Is the basis consistent? A ticket showing net and an invoice priced on gross is a difference you are paying for.
- Does the tank on the ticket match the tank you expected? This is the field people skip, and the one that explains inventory that never quite adds up.
If the delivered quantity is lower than you expected, that is usually ordinary — see why your fuel invoice changed after delivery for what moves the number.
How Energy Connect handles it
Delivery tickets are captured at the drop and linked to both the order line and the bill of lading the load came from. The invoice is generated from the delivered quantity on the ticket rather than the ordered quantity, and the signed document travels with the invoice, so a disputed line is settled by opening the attachment rather than by tracking down the driver.