What in the world is "pre-load a trailer"?

It is when you go to a shipper and you dont have to wait for it to be loaded.
It is preloaded.
When they say live load that means you have wait to have the trailer loaded.

 

Depends on the type of work you do. At most places that have vans, they also have a spotting tractor that will drag the trailer up to the door and back it in so that it can be preloaded and sealed before you get there. So a pre loaded trailer there is all set to go, you drop the empty and hook on to the full one, grab the paperwork and boogie down the road.

You rarely find this happening in the flatbed world, because the driver has to secure the load, and the driver supplies his own chains, straps, and tarps to do so. So the flatbed world tends to not load the trailer until the driver is there and ready to secure the load.

In the tanker world, some loads get preloaded, or in some cases, a company may keep a worker on site specifically to load their own trailers at a facility. We have several facilities in the Chicago area where we have anywhere from one to 4 people assigned there that do nothing but preload our trailers for the road tractors to pick up. Paperwork is all done except for printing out the final bill of lading. We drive in, drop an empty, check the seals and pick up the BOL, and away we go.

It varies with the company and trailer type, but the goal is to have you use your productive time hauling the load, not sitting around a yard burning up your available hours.