--- title: "What Is an EDI 214 (Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message)?" url: https://www.uncap.com/glossary/edi-214 author: "Denis Dyli" published: 2026-10-28 updated: 2026-10-29 summary: "An EDI 214 is the X12 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message: the transaction set a transportation carrier uses to give shippers, consignees and their agents the status of their shipments. X12 describes that status in terms of dates, times, locations, route, identifying numbers and conveyance." --- # What Is an EDI 214 (Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message)? > An EDI 214 is the X12 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message: the transaction set a transportation carrier uses to give shippers, consignees and their agents the status of their shipments. X12 describes that status in terms of dates, times, locations, route, identifying numbers and conveyance. **EDI 214 (Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message)**: An EDI 214 is the X12 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message: the transaction set a transportation carrier uses to give shippers, consignees and their agents the status of their shipments. X12 describes that status in terms of dates, times, locations, route, identifying numbers and conveyance. ## How it works An EDI 214 is the X12 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message, which a carrier sends to report where a shipment stands. X12's purpose statement for the 214 names who sends it, who receives it and what it reports: - Sender: a transportation carrier. - Receivers: shippers, consignees and their agents. - Content: the status of shipments in terms of dates, times, locations, route, identifying numbers and conveyance. The 214 belongs to X12's transportation family. X12's Supply Chain subcommittee (X12M) is responsible for supply chain transaction sets, except the transportation-specific ones, which X12's Transportation subcommittee (X12I) maintains. X12's supply chain overview notes that additional carrier and transport EDI transactions capture the movement of items between supplier and buyer locations, including by air, common carrier and train. For ocean shipments, X12 has a separate transaction set, the [315 Status Details (Ocean)](/glossary/edi-315), which can be used to report status or event details for selected shipments or containers. ## The 214 among carrier documents The 214 is one of several X12 transaction sets that pass between shippers and carriers, each with its own job: - 204 Motor Carrier Load Tender: a shipper offers (tenders) a shipment to a full load (truckload) motor carrier, with scheduling, equipment requirements, commodities and shipping instructions. - 990 Response to a Load Tender: the response to a 204 used as a load tender. - 211 Motor Carrier Bill of Lading: lets the party contracting with a motor carrier provide a legal bill of lading for a shipment. - 214 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message: the carrier reports the status of the shipment. - 210 Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice: detail of charges for services a motor carrier rendered, used as an invoice to request payment or as details of the freight charges. The 214 is not the ship notice. The 856 Ship Notice/Manifest comes from the organization responsible for detailing the contents of a shipment and describes what is in it. The 214 comes from the carrier and describes where the shipment stands. ## Example A distributor ships 6 pallets to a buyer by truck. The carrier picks them up on Monday at 2:00 p.m. and sends a 214 with that date, time and location. It sends another when the freight reaches a terminal on Tuesday, and a last one on delivery, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. From pickup to delivery is 10 hours on Monday, 24 hours on Tuesday and 10 hours on Wednesday: 10 + 24 + 10 = 44 hours in transit. The distributor and the buyer can both work that out from the 214 timestamps. ## On Shopify On Shopify, shipment status updates are recorded on a fulfillment as fulfillment events. Shopify describes a fulfillment event as a tracking event that records the status and location of a fulfillment at a specific point in time, and says fulfillment events provide a chronological history of a package's journey from shipment to delivery. - Statuses: the status values include carrier picked up, in transit, out for delivery, attempted delivery, delayed and delivered. - Time and place: each event records when it happened and can hold the street address, city, province, country, zip code, latitude and longitude where it occurred, plus an estimated delivery date and time and a message. - Creating events: the fulfillmentEventCreate mutation in the GraphQL Admin API creates an event to track the shipment status and location of items that have shipped. It requires the write_fulfillments access scope. An integration that receives 214s from a carrier can use that mutation to record each status on the matching Shopify fulfillment. ## How Uncap helps [Uncap Connect](/products/connect) is the real-time data layer between Shopify, your ERP, and the warehouse floor. As Uncap puts it, the order lands in the ERP, fulfillment updates land on the storefront, and nobody retypes a thing. ## Related terms - Bill of lading - EDI 856 - LTL freight (less-than-truckload) - 3PL (third-party logistics) - Freight broker - EDI (electronic data interchange) ## Sources - X12: 214 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message - X12 Transaction Sets - Shopify Dev Docs: FulfillmentEvent ## Frequently asked questions ### What does the EDI 214 message mean? It is the X12 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message. A transportation carrier sends it to shippers, consignees and their agents to report the status of shipments in terms of dates, times, locations, route, identifying numbers and conveyance. ### What is the difference between EDI 204 and EDI 214? They travel in opposite directions. In a 204 Motor Carrier Load Tender, a shipper offers a shipment to a truckload motor carrier. In a 214, a transportation carrier reports the status of a shipment back to shippers, consignees and their agents. ### What is a 210 EDI? The X12 210 Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice gives detail of the charges for services a motor carrier rendered. It is used as a motor carrier invoice to request payment, or as details of the freight charges for a shipment.