FAR and DFARS › FAR Part 47: Transportation › Subpart 47.3
FAR 47.305-7 Quantity analysis, direct delivery, and reduction of crosshauling and backhauling.
The codified text (eCFR, as of 2026-10-02). Under the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul ↗, agencies follow class deviations with new text for many parts while the formal rules go through the Federal Register: check the solicitation and your contract's clauses, which rule.
In plain English
This section tells contracting officers and requiring activities to analyze shipping quantities and delivery methods to reduce transportation costs. It encourages buying in carload or truckload quantities, considering direct delivery to users, and choosing transshipment points that avoid crosshauling and backhauling. For contractors, it means the government may structure deliveries or quantities in ways that affect how and where you ship.
Applies to: Contracting officers and requiring activities involved in transportation and delivery planning
What it requires
- Consider acquiring carload or truckload quantities
- Check with the requiring activity whether additional quantities are needed when transport costs would be lower or only slightly higher
- Consider direct delivery from contractor to using activity when large quantities are involved
- Select distribution and transshipment facilities to reduce crosshauling and backhauling
Key terms: carload · truckload · direct delivery · crosshauling · backhauling
Written by AI from this section's text. A guide, not legal advice: the text below rules.
The text
(a) Quantity analysis. (1) The requiring activity shall consider the acquisition of carload or truckload quantities.
(2) When additional quantities of the supplies being acquired can be transported at lower unit transportation costs or with a relatively small increase in total transportation costs, with no impairment to the program schedule, the contracting officer shall ascertain from the requiring activity whether there is a known requirement for additional quantities. This may be the case, for example, when the additional quantity could profitably be stored by the activity for future use, or could be distributed advantageously to several using activities on the same transportation route or in the same geographical area.
(b) Direct delivery. When it is the usual practice of a requiring activity to acquire supplies in large quantities for shipment to a central point and subsequent distribution to using activities, as needed, consideration shall be given, if sufficient quantities are involved to warrant scheduling direct delivery, to the feasibility of providing for direct delivery from the contractor to the using activity, thereby reducing the cost of transportation and handling.
(c) Crosshauling and backhauling. The contracting officer shall select distribution and transshipment facilities intermediate to origins and ultimate destinations to reduce crosshauling and backhauling; i.e., the transportation of personal property of the same kind in opposite directions or the return of the property to or through areas previously traversed in shipment.
Sections that refer to it
- 47.305 Solicitation provisions, contract clauses, and transportation factors.
← 47.305-6 Shipments to ports and air terminals. · 47.305-8 Consolidation of small shipments and the use of stopoff privileges. →
Rule changes for FAR Part 47
- Federal Acquisition Regulation: Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul Parts 9, 27, and 47 ↗ · proposed 2026-09-18 · comments due 2026-10-19
- Federal Acquisition Regulation: Training To Prevent Human Trafficking for Certain Air Carriers; Correction ↗ · final rule 2024-12-30 · effective 2025-01-03
- Federal Acquisition Regulation: Training To Prevent Human Trafficking for Certain Air Carriers ↗ · final rule 2024-12-16 · effective 2025-01-03
Source: eCFR, 48 CFR chapters 1 and 2 (GPO GovInfo bulk data) ↗. Plain words for the terms: glossary.