Coordinating the movement of freight in and out of a facility or company, you work with carriers, brokers, and operations to schedule loads, build manifests, and track shipments — the administrative backbone of inbound and outbound logistics.
A typical day often runs at a logistics desk with a TMS, email, and phone in steady use — booking loads with carriers, building bills of lading, tracking shipments in transit, fielding driver or warehouse calls about appointments or paperwork. You're often the operational owner of the daily freight pulse between the facility and the broader supply chain.
What surprises people new to the role is the cascading effect of small paperwork issues — a wrong PO number, a missed appointment, or a misclassified hazardous material can stall a load and ripple into customer or compliance issues. Variance across employers is wide: at large shippers and 3PLs the work runs structured with TMS platforms; at smaller operations it may share space with broader warehouse and customer-service work.
Folks who do well here often carry patience with documentation, comfort with carrier negotiation, and steady multitasking under deadline. CTL, CSCP, and APICS credentials anchor advancement. The trade-off is the deadline-driven cadence of freight work and the after-hours dimension when shipments don't observe business hours.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Business Operations roles →Coordinating the movement of freight in and out of a facility or company, you work with carriers, brokers, and operations to schedule loads, build manifests, and track shipments — the administrative backbone of inbound and outbound logistics.
Median pay for a Freight Coordinator is about $76K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $37K to $181K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Reading Comprehension, Active Listening, Monitoring, Coordination, and Complex Problem Solving.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 7.3% through 2034, with roughly 310,800 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Distribution Operations Manager, Operations Director, and Dispatch Manager.
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