Shipping and Receiving Coordinator Career Guide,
Salary, Licence & Jobs 2026

BLS groups the role with Shipping, Receiving, and Inventory Clerks (SOC 43-5071), with an OEWS May 2025 median of $45,260 a year, or $21.76 an hour, and a range from $34,650 at the 10th percentile to $62,190 at the 90th. A coordinator who owns scheduling and carrier coordination typically sits in the upper half of that spread.

A clerk processes the dock's transactions — checking in loads, scanning receipts, preparing BOLs. A coordinator sits a level up, sequencing carrier appointments against doors and labour, resolving discrepancies through EDI, and coordinating between the floor, carriers and customer service. They share SOC 43-5071, but the coordinator role leans on scheduling and communication rather than pure processing.

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They coordinate the flow of freight across the dock: booking and sequencing carrier appointments, staging inbound and outbound loads against capacity, keeping bills of lading, ASNs and manifests accurate, reconciling discrepancies, and keeping carriers and customer service aligned so shipments hit their windows and nothing ships short.

No. BLS classifies the clerical family as entry-level, typically needing only a high-school diploma and short on-the-job training. Most coordinators come up from clerk or warehouse-floor roles, and pay turns on systems fluency and coordination skill rather than a credential. A degree matters only for the move up into logistics-coordinator or supervisor roles.

The clerical family is shrinking: BLS projects -7.7% employment change for shipping, receiving and inventory clerks through 2034 as scanning, WMS and EDI absorb manual record-keeping. The coordination side — scheduling, carrier and customer communication, exception handling — is more durable than pure data entry, which is why coordinators fare better than processing clerks, but the trend is downward and turnover still drives about 69,300 openings a year.

A dock- or yard-scheduling system to sequence appointments, a warehouse management system such as Manhattan or Blue Yonder for receiving and shipping transactions, a transportation management system and carrier portals to book and track freight, and EDI for BOLs and ASNs (the 856 message). Fluency across these tools is the main thing that keeps the role above pure processing work.