Matching Your Truck to a Load: Why Only Two Things Decide What You See

Two things decide which loads you see: what type of truck you have, and which corridors it runs. That is the whole matching rule. Everything else about the load — its weight, its dimensions, whether it needs a tarpaulin, what insurance the shipper would prefer — is shown to you, not used to filter you out.

That is a deliberate design decision, and it is worth understanding, because it changes what you should do with your own truck record. This guide covers what the two criteria are, why there are only two, and what to fill in so the board actually works for you.

Why only two

The temptation when building a load board is to match on everything: weight against payload, cargo length against deck length, temperature range, insurance cover, securing equipment. Each filter looks sensible on its own.

Stack them up and the board goes empty. Kweli’s founding rule on this is blunt:

“We actually need core matching criteria. Adding too many meta items to matching will filter out too many loads. So critical items, corridor and truck type — the rest is displayed meta for application decision.”

The reasoning is about who is better placed to judge. A machine comparing your stated payload against a stated load weight will hide a load from you — when you might know the weight is conservative, or that you are running that lane empty anyway and would take it at a lower rate. A filter cannot know any of that. You can.

So the platform’s job is to show you the facts and let you decide, and to show the shipper the facts about your truck so they can decide too. Both sides see everything; neither side is filtered out by a machine’s opinion.

Criterion 1: truck type

A load asks for a body that can carry it. A tanker load needs a tanker; a reefer load needs refrigeration; palletised general freight wants a curtain-side or a flatdeck. This is the one comparison a machine can make reliably, because it is a category match rather than a judgement call.

If your truck’s body type is not recorded, the matcher has nothing to compare — and the safest thing a matcher can do with an unknown is not to guess. Which means a truck with no body type recorded is a truck the board struggles to help.

Criterion 2: corridor

A corridor is a route between two hubs — Johannesburg to Durban, Durban to Harare, Gauteng to Beira. Kweli holds 226 corridors: 119 cross-border and 107 domestic.

Corridors belong to the truck, not to you. This trips people up. A three-truck operator might run one vehicle on the N3 to Durban, one cross-border to Zimbabwe, and one on local Gauteng work. Recording those against the business would tell the matcher that any of your trucks might take any of those loads, which is not true. So each truck carries its own list.

A truck may hold up to five active corridors. That is a real cap, not a suggestion — the highest number of active corridors on any truck in our data is exactly five.

What the network looks like

Corridors available	226 (119 cross-border · 107 domestic)
Real trucks registered	324
…with at least one active corridor	231
…therefore without one	93
Average active corridors per truck	2,0 (cap is 5)

Ninety-three trucks have no corridor set. On a board where corridor is one of only two matching criteria, that is the single most consequential blank field on the platform — and the average of two, against a cap of five, suggests most operators are describing less of their working range than they actually cover.

What is displayed but does not filter

These were once checks that could stop an application. They were deliberately demoted to information:

• Payload against load weight — you see the comparison; it does not block you
• Cargo length, width and height against deck dimensions — shown, not enforced
• Temperature range — shown, not enforced
• Tarpaulin, securing type, GIT cover, axle count, hazchem capability — all disclosure

Demoted, not deleted — and the distinction is the point. The comparison still happens and you still see it. What was removed was its power of veto. An operator who sees “this load is 34 t and your stated payload is 32 t” can make a call; a filter that silently removed the load gives them nothing to make a call about.

The same applies in the other direction: the shipper looking at your application sees your truck’s details next to their load’s, and decides. That is the platform working as a collector of facts rather than an authority on who may work with whom.

What actually stops an application

A small, specific list — and each one has a fix rather than being a dead end:

Why	What to do
No truck registered	Add a vehicle
No vehicle picked for this load	Choose which truck will haul it
Truck type cannot carry this load	Pick a compatible truck
Truck does not run this corridor	Add the corridor to that truck
Truck is busy — committed, loading or in maintenance	Free it up or pick another
No current vehicle licence on that truck	Upload the licence disc
Registration country does not match a domestic load	Cabotage rules — use a differently registered truck
Cross-border load without permit and GIT	Add the documents
Already applied · your own load · load closed	—

Notice what is not on that list: nothing about weight, dimensions or temperature. Those were the demotions.

What to do with your own truck record

1. Set the body type on every truck. It is one of the two things that decides what you see.
2. Set corridors on every truck, per truck. Up to five each. If a truck genuinely runs a lane, list it — an unlisted lane is a lane whose loads you will never be shown.
3. Fill in the rest anyway. Payload, dimensions, GIT, securing equipment. None of it filters you, and all of it is what the shipper reads when choosing between applicants. On a board where the machine has stopped judging, the disclosure is the pitch.
4. Keep the vehicle licence current. It is one of the few things that genuinely blocks.

Questions people ask

Why am I not seeing any loads?
Most often because the truck has no corridors set, or no body type. Those are the two matching criteria — with either missing, the matcher has nothing to work with. 93 of the 324 trucks on the network currently have no corridor.

How many corridors can one truck have?
Up to five active at a time. They belong to the truck rather than to the business, so each vehicle in a fleet carries its own list.

Will the system stop me applying for a load that is too heavy for my truck?
No. It will show you the comparison and let you decide. Weight, cargo dimensions and temperature range were deliberately demoted from blocks to displayed information, because a filter cannot know what you know about your own truck and your own lane.

Do corridors belong to me or to my truck?
To the truck. A three-truck fleet running three different lanes needs three different corridor lists, otherwise the matcher would offer every load to every vehicle.

If most details do not filter, why fill them in?
Because the shipper reads them. Once the machine stops judging, your truck’s disclosed detail is what distinguishes your application from the next one.

Where this comes from

• The two-criteria rule and the demotions — Kweli’s own matching decision of 12 August 2026, quoted above.
• Corridor and fleet counts — Kweli Load Exchange, real non-test vehicles, read 16 August 2026. The five-corridor cap was checked against the data, not just the rule: the highest active count on any truck is exactly five.
• What blocks an application — the apply-block catalogue in Kweli’s own codebase, which is the single place that decides.

Next

• Trucks for road freight — the hub: body, rig and axles
• Which trailer for which cargo — all 34 types
• Transport corridors — the routes themselves
• Kweli Load Exchange — free to join, no commission