Terms of service

1. Who Anvil is

Anvil is operated by [legal entity name], a [state] company at [registered address].

Anvil is not a motor carrier. Anvil does not own trucks, employ drivers, or take physical possession of freight. Anvil arranges for licensed motor carriers to transport your freight, and the carrier that signs your bill of lading is the party that carries it. Anvil intends to operate as a licensed property broker under FMCSA authority [MC number] with the required surety bond [bond number and amount]. Until those registrations are in place Anvil is not accepting freight for transportation.

2. Your account

Anvil is for business use. You must be authorized to act for the company you register, and you are responsible for what happens under your account, including what your teammates do. Owners can invite and remove teammates and can set whether a teammate may change payment details.

Opening an account includes a credit application. Anvil decides whether to extend a credit line and how large it is, and may decline, reduce, or withdraw a line at any time. Until an account is approved you can build shipments and pull rates, but you cannot dispatch freight. Approval is not a promise of any particular capacity, rate, or transit time.

3. Quotes

Rates are quoted from carrier pricing that changes, so a quote is good for a limited time and Anvil will tell you when it expires. Booking against an expired quote re-rates the shipment at the price available then.

The price you are shown is the price Anvil records, and booking uses that stored price rather than anything sent from your browser. A quote is calculated from what you enter: the class, weight, dimensions, addresses, and services you select. Every quote assumes that information is accurate, and section 5 covers what happens when it is not.

Anvil quotes one all-in price per carrier option, with every component shown as its own line. There is no separate brokerage charge added at the end.

4. Booking and cancellation

Booking a shipment tenders it to the carrier you selected and creates a bill of lading in your company’s name as shipper. You are responsible for the accuracy of that bill of lading and for having the freight ready, properly packaged, and correctly labelled at the pickup location during the hours you gave.

You can cancel before pickup at no charge. Once a carrier has attempted or made a pickup, cancellation may incur the carrier’s charges, which Anvil will pass through at cost and show you before billing.

5. Reweighs, reclassification, and other adjustments

Carriers weigh, measure, and inspect freight in their terminals. If what they find differs from your bill of lading, they rebill the shipment, and that is the single most common source of a charge you did not expect.

• Reweigh. The freight weighs more than stated, so the rate changes.
• Reclassification. The freight’s density puts it in a different class than stated, so the rate changes.
• Accessorials found at the dock. A liftgate, a residential address, a limited-access site, or an appointment that was needed but not booked.

When a carrier rebills, Anvil records the adjustment as its own charge line against your shipment and leaves the original quote intact, so you can always see both. Anvil will dispute an adjustment on your behalf when there is a basis to, and every carrier has a deadline for that; Anvil shows the deadline on the shipment. Adjustments Anvil cannot successfully dispute are your responsibility.

An adjustment passes through at what the carrier charged. Anvil’s own charge for moving the freight is fixed by the quote you accepted and does not move with a reweigh. Anvil never earns more because your freight was reweighed.

6. Disputing an adjustment, and what it costs

When an adjustment lands, Anvil shows you two ways to handle it and you choose one for that adjustment. Nothing in these terms chooses for you or signs you up in advance.

• Handle it yourself. Free. Anvil gives you the carrier’s paperwork, the deadline, and what it would have argued.
• Anvil fights it. If Anvil recovers money, Anvil keeps 20% of the amount recovered and you keep the rest. If the dispute is lost, there is no fee.

The amount recovered is the difference between what the carrier billed and what the carrier finally charged once the dispute settled. There is no handling fee, no filing fee, and no minimum, so 20% of nothing is nothing. The fee is charged only after the dispute settles, and it appears as its own line naming the adjustment it came from.

Anvil does not open a dispute where less than $50 is at stake, because the work costs more than it returns. Anvil separately audits carrier invoices for errors that are its own to fight, such as a tariff or fuel table applied wrongly. Those never reach your bill and carry no fee.

7. Payment

Anvil charges when freight delivers, not when you book. A valid payment method must be on file before your first booking, and Anvil charges it on delivery for the amount billed, including any adjustments under section 5.

Card numbers never reach Anvil’s systems. They go from your browser to the payment processor, which returns a token that Anvil stores in place of the number.

Shipments in transit count against your credit line and release it as they deliver. Anvil may decline a booking that would exceed the line. Amounts unpaid after [terms] may accrue interest at [rate] and may result in the account being suspended.

8. What you may not ship

Some freight needs paperwork, permits, or handling that a self-serve booking cannot arrange, and some cannot move on a common carrier at all.

• Hazardous materials without complete, correct shipping papers meeting 49 CFR requirements. A bill of lading generated by Anvil is not a hazmat shipping paper.
• Live animals, human remains, currency, precious metals and stones, firearms and ammunition, tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and its derivatives, and controlled substances.
• Anything illegal to possess or transport, and anything you do not own or control.
• Freight above the carrier’s stated limits, or requiring temperature control, unless that service was quoted and booked.

Tendering freight in this section is a breach of these terms, and you are responsible for the resulting fines, cleanup, storage, and carrier charges.

9. Loss and damage

Read this section before you ship anything valuable. Carriers do not insure freight. Every LTL carrier limits its liability by freight class and by pound under its own tariff, and those limits are commonly a small fraction of what the goods are worth. A pallet of electronics worth $40,000 may be covered at a few thousand dollars.

Cargo claims are against the carrier, under the carrier’s tariff and the Carmack Amendment, not against Anvil. Anvil will file and pursue a claim for you and will give you the documents needed to support it, and Anvil is not the insurer and does not guarantee the outcome.

If the goods are worth more than the carrier’s limit, buy shipper’s interest cargo insurance. Anvil does not currently sell it.

10. Transit times

Transit estimates are carrier service standards in business days, not guarantees, and they exclude weekends and holidays. LTL freight moves through terminals and gets delayed by weather, capacity, and equipment. Unless you booked and paid for a guaranteed service, a late delivery is not a refundable event, and Anvil does not accept liability for consequential losses caused by delay.

11. Acceptable use

Do not attempt to access another company’s data, probe or interfere with the service, scrape rates, resell access to Anvil, or use the service to build a competing rating product. Anvil may suspend an account for any of these.

12. Disclaimers and limits

The service is provided as is. Anvil disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement to the extent the law allows.

Anvil’s total liability for any claim relating to a shipment is limited to the amount you paid Anvil for that shipment. Neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost profits. Nothing here limits a carrier’s own liability to you under section 9, or limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

13. Ending the relationship

You can close your account at any time. Anvil can suspend or close an account for breach of these terms, non-payment, or a credit decision. Shipments already in transit continue and remain payable. Anvil keeps shipment records after closure as described in the privacy policy.

14. Changes, law, and contact

Anvil may change these terms and will post the new version here with a new date. Material changes will be emailed to account owners. Continuing to book after a change accepts it.

These terms are governed by the laws of [state], without regard to conflict of laws rules, and the courts of [venue] have exclusive jurisdiction.

Questions about these terms: [legal contact address].