Find Trucks for Your Load: What Gets a Load Seen, and What Gets It Taken

Two things decide who sees your load first. Six things decide whether they take it. Both are knowable, and neither is about paying more.

This page is the shipper’s side of the matching engine — written from what our own system actually does, and from what the loads posted on it actually look like.

Who sees your load

Exactly two things decide who is shown it first:

1. Vehicle type. Tipper work goes to tippers.
2. Corridor. The lanes each truck actually runs.

Nothing narrows the audience. Not your weight, not your dimensions, not your insurance requirements — and not the two above either: an operator off your lane still sees the load and can still apply. All of it is recorded and all of it is shown to the operator; none of it stops your load reaching them.

So the practical implication is the opposite of a tender process. Adding requirements does not sharpen your shortlist here; it just gives the operator more to read. The way to reach more trucks is a correct origin and destination — because that is what resolves to a corridor.

Whether they take it: the six fields

Every load posted on Kweli is graded out of 100 on how completely it is described. This is not a judgement about your freight — it is a checklist of what an operator needs before they can say yes, and every point is earned by a field you can fill in.

Field	Worth	Why an operator needs it
What the cargo is	25	An operator needs to know what they are carrying.
When to collect	20	A date alone leaves the driver guessing. Give a time.
Weight	20	It decides which truck can legally take the load.
Rate	15	Even “negotiable” counts. Silence does not.
Payment terms	15	The first thing most transporters look for.
Payment timing	5	How soon after delivery you pay.

None of these takes thirty seconds. All of them are things you already know when you post.

What shippers actually leave out

Every load posted to Kweli is graded on that rubric the moment it goes up — the same rubric, every load, no exceptions. This is what the grading finds missing most often:

Field	Worth	How often it is left out
What the cargo is	25	45% of loads
When to collect	20	38% of loads
Payment timing	5	10% of loads
Rate	15	6% of loads
Weight	20	Almost never
Payment terms	15	Almost never

The two fields worth the most are the two most often missing. Weight, rate and payment terms are filled in on 94% or more of loads. Cargo description and collection window — together worth 45 of the 100 points — are missing on roughly four in ten.

Roughly one load in five is missing both. Those posts score 55 out of 100, and they are asking an operator to commit a truck, a driver and a tank of diesel to a job whose cargo is unnamed and whose collection time is unknown.

Across the whole board: 30% of loads score 100, and 20% score under 60. The average is 79. If you fill in two fields you are already above most of the board, which is a cheap advantage and an unusual one.

“Goods” is not a cargo description

The grader wants more than ten characters, which is a deliberately low bar — it catches emptiness without judging how anyone writes. But the operator reading it is making a real decision: 40 pallets of bagged cement, palletised, forklift at both ends tells them the trailer, the securing and the turnaround. Goods tells them to phone you, and most will not.

It follows you

Here is the part that makes this worth more than one load.

Operators are disclosed to shippers, and shippers to operators. An operator putting a truck on the road is carrying the risk of that trip, and they are entitled to know who is asking them to carry it. So each shipper has a card, and it shows:

• Loads posted — a plain count of something that happened
• Loads cancelled after posting — because an operator who applies wants to know
• How completely you describe your loads — your average grade across everything you have ever posted

That third one is the earned signal, and it is the one you control completely. It is behaviour observed over time rather than a claim, and it is entirely explainable: it is the fields you filled in.

Anything we have not observed shows as not assessed rather than as a default. A shipper with no history is unknown, never bad — and never quietly good either.

What we are not going to tell you: the lane rate

The most common thing shippers search for is what a lane should cost — per ton, per ton-kilometre, for a specific commodity on a specific route. We see those searches constantly and we are not going to answer them with a number.

Here is exactly why. Most loads carry a rate — but they are priced in different units, and once you narrow to a single commodity the sample collapses. For mining freight priced per ton, most of what we hold is the same posting repeated, and the same Johannesburg–Durban lane appears at both R250 and R750 a ton.

A threefold spread on one lane is not a benchmark. It is noise, and publishing it as a rate would be worse than saying nothing — because a number in a table looks exactly like a measurement whatever its sample size.

What we can tell you is that these are posted rates, not settled ones — what a shipper offered, not what a transporter accepted. When the board carries enough completed work on a lane to say something honest, we will say it.

In the meantime, the rates and running costs hub covers what a truck actually costs to run, which is the other half of any rate conversation and the half that is knowable.

Posting a load that gets taken

1. Get origin and destination right. Type the real place — the system resolves it to a corridor, and the corridor is what reaches trucks.
2. Name the cargo properly. Worth 25 points and missing on nearly half the board.
3. Give a collection time, not just a date. Worth 20, missing on nearly four in ten.
4. State the weight. It decides which trucks can legally carry it.
5. Put a rate, even “negotiable”. Silence scores zero; negotiable scores full marks.
6. Say when you pay. It is the first thing most transporters look for.

Questions people ask

How do I find a truck for my load in South Africa?
Post the load with a correct origin and destination — those resolve to a corridor, and the corridor plus the vehicle type is what puts your load in front of trucks that actually run that lane. Then describe it completely, because that is what decides whether they take it.

Why is nobody applying to my load?
Most often because it is incomplete rather than badly priced. Roughly 45% of posted loads have no proper cargo description and 38% have no collection time — the two fields worth the most in our grading. A load missing both scores 55 out of 100.

Does a higher rate get my load taken faster?
Not on its own. Rate is worth 15 of 100 points in how completely a load is described, and 94% of loads already state one. Cargo description and collection window are worth 45 between them and are missing far more often.

What can operators see about me as a shipper?
Loads posted, loads cancelled after posting, and how completely you describe your loads across your whole history. Anything not observed shows as not assessed rather than as a default — a new shipper is unknown, not bad.

What should a transporter charge per ton on my lane?
We do not publish lane rates. Once narrowed to one commodity our sample collapses — mining freight priced per ton is eight loads, with the same Johannesburg–Durban lane at both R250 and R750. That is noise, not a benchmark, and a number in a table looks like a measurement whatever its sample.

Do I need to specify a truck type?
Vehicle type is one of the two filters, so it determines who sees the load. Specify what the cargo genuinely needs — extra requirements beyond that do not sharpen your shortlist, they just narrow your audience.

Where these numbers come from

• The grading rubric and its point values — Kweli’s load grading service, the single authority applied to every load posted.
• The missing-field shares — every real load on the board measured against that rubric on 17 August 2026, test and demonstration loads excluded.
• The score distribution — all but one load carries a grade, and the average is 79 out of 100.
• The rate figures — most loads carry a rate; a handful of mining loads are priced per ton.

These figures describe the loads posted on Kweli, not the whole market. They are useful for one thing: knowing what most posts leave out, so yours does not.

For brokers and forwarders

• Freight brokers in Southern Africa — the operator guide
• Truck load brokers — what they do
• Becoming a freight broker
• Brokers vs load boards

Next

• Rates and running costs — what a truck costs to run
• Trucks and what they carry — which trailer suits your cargo
• Abnormal, bulk and special loads — if yours needs a permit
• Countries we cover — where we can route a load