Industries

Backhaul

Transportation & Logistics. The return leg of a trip. A truck that drops an excavator at a jobsite or a pallet at a store usually drives back empty, and that leg is already paid for. Loading it with a transfer, a return or a pickup is the cheapest capacity in the network. Nash checks the day's routes for return legs and plans transfers onto them before booking a new trip.

Where this fits

Vertical-specific patterns shared by the operators Nash serves. BOPIS, click-and-collect, cold chain, ship-from-store, catering windows, multi-marketplace. Each carries operational nuance that Nash absorbs without forcing the operation to bend to the software.

Related terms

Lane: Transportation & Logistics. A recurring origin-to-destination route in freight. Carriers price and contract by lane (e.g., LA to Chicago); the same lane can carry very different rates depending on direction, season, and current capacity. Operators often use lane loosely for any recurring route, including the local delivery routes Nash would call a route.
Empty miles: Transportation & Logistics. Distance driven without cargo, which drivers and dispatchers call deadhead. The single biggest source of preventable cost waste in trucking. Industry average runs 15-25%; the right dispatch logic compresses it.
Chain of custody: Pharma, healthcare, age-restricted goods. Documented, signed-off handoffs that prove a controlled item moved through verified hands at every step. Required for prescriptions, lab samples, alcohol, tobacco, and high-value freight.
Service window: Field services, B2B. The scheduled arrival window a customer is given (e.g., between 1pm and 3pm Tuesday). The narrower the window, the more pressure on dispatch precision and the more painful a missed slot.
Ship-from-store: Retail. Using a retail store's existing inventory as a fulfillment node for online orders. Turns excess store stock into same-day delivery capacity and shortens the last-mile leg from a regional DC to the customer.