Bill of lading barcodes: Code 128, GS1-128, and AI (402)

Every number on a bill of lading eventually gets typed into someone's system — unless it scans. A receiving clerk with a scanner checks a trailer in without keying 17-digit shipment IDs by hand, which is faster and eliminates the transposition errors that turn into mismatched receipts. The carrier scans the PRO number to tie the pickup to its tracking system. A retail distribution center scans the GS1-128 shipment ID and matches it against the advance ship notice before the dock door closes.

Barcodes are how the document stops being paper and starts being data. Two symbologies cover everything a BOL needs.

Code 128 is the standard high-density linear barcode for logistics. It encodes the full ASCII set — letters, digits, and punctuation — and its digit-pair mode (subset C) packs purely numeric strings two digits per character, which is why a long PRO number still fits in a small box on the page.

On a DockBOL document, two values print as Code 128: your BOL reference — the number you assign — and the carrier's PRO number, added when the carrier issues it. Each prints with the human-readable number beneath the bars.

GS1-128 is Code 128 with two additions: a flag character (FNC1) that announces “this symbol follows GS1 rules,” and Application Identifiers — short numeric prefixes that tell the scanner what the following data means.

AI (402) means “GS1 shipment identification number” — the 17-digit VICS ID. So when a scanner reads (402)06141410000123452, it knows the value is a shipment ID and routes those 17 digits to the right field. The AI is encoded into the symbol but is not part of the 17-digit value itself — the check-digit math runs on the digits alone.

These are live renders from the same vector barcode model that drives the DockBOL preview and the exported PDF — not images. Point any 1D scanner or phone camera at them.

DockBOL encodes every barcode with a dedicated ISO/IEC 15417 encoder and captures the result as resolution-independent vector geometry — the same model drives the live preview and the exported PDF, so what you see is mathematically what prints. Quiet zones are enforced by the engine, the human-readable number prints beneath every symbol, and long values shrink uniformly to fit their box with bar proportions intact. No barcode fonts, no stretched images, no screenshots.