Delivery slot booking
Slot booking is the reservation of a time window at a loading dock: the carrier declares when it will arrive, with what vehicle and what load, and the warehouse assigns it a place in the schedule. Unloading then spreads across the day instead of crowding into the yard first thing in the morning.
It usually works like this: the carrier gets an order number from the consignee and books a window in the consignee's portal or by email with the warehouse supervisor. The booking carries the vehicle and driver details, the number of pallets and the delivery document number, so nothing has to be sorted out at the gate. Large retail chains and logistics operators run their own booking systems, so a forwarder serving several consignees logs into several portals.
Slot booking also works as discipline. A late truck loses its window and waits for a free slot, and some contracts attach a fee to a missed booking. The other way round: time spent waiting in the yard counts as the driver's working time under the rules, so a badly built dock schedule eats hours that are then missing on the road.
On the warehouse side the bookings are the plan for the day. The supervisor knows in advance how many pallets are coming and at what time, so people can be split between goods-in and picking, and freight meant for immediate transfer can be placed in a window aligned with its outbound truck.
You can tell this is your topic when windows are agreed by phone and email, and a queue forms at the gate in the morning while the dock stands empty in the afternoon. Drivers also turn up for a time the warehouse knows nothing about.