generated: '2026-08-03'
method: searched
source:
- https://dsdc.nmfta.org/
- https://dsdc.nmfta.org/digital-ltl-council
- https://dsdc.nmfta.org/digital-ftl-council/about-us
- https://nmfta.org/
type: Governance
organization:
  legal_name: National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. (NMFTA)
  founded: 1956
  nature: nonprofit membership association setting standards for North American freight
  standards_division: Digital Standards Development Council (DSDC)
  note: >-
    The DSDC is a division of NMFTA, not a separate legal entity. It integrates the earlier
    Digital LTL Council and Digital FTL Council under one program.
  contact: dsdc@nmfta.org
  phone: 866-411-6632

bodies:
- name: Digital LTL Council
  type: council
  founded: November 2020
  scope: >-
    Less-than-truckload. Convenes transportation providers, logistics service providers,
    shippers, technology partners and industry organizations. Published its first eBOL standard
    in late 2021; current focus is shipment visibility and freight exception handling.
  url: https://dsdc.nmfta.org/digital-ltl-council
- name: Digital FTL Council
  type: council
  scope: >-
    Full truckload. Convenes shippers, carriers, logistics intermediaries and freight technology
    companies to produce a unified set of API standards across the FTL shipment lifecycle.
  url: https://dsdc.nmfta.org/digital-ftl-council/about-us
  merged_in:
  - name: Scheduling Standards Consortium (SSC)
    note: joined the FTL Council, consolidating FTL scheduling standardization
    source: https://dsdc.nmfta.org/ssc-joins-the-dsdc

process:
  model: volunteer workshops
  note: >-
    Scope, field definitions and logic are set in workshops run with carriers, shippers, 3PLs
    and technology providers, which is why the specifications read as industry agreement rather
    than one platform's data model.
  contributor_agreement: https://dsdc.nmfta.org/contributor-agreement-form
  membership_meeting: https://nmfta.org/nmfta-event/2026-dsdc-membership-meeting/
  speaker_toolkit: https://dsdc.nmfta.org/speaker-toolkit

mandate:
  regulatory: none
  note: >-
    Like CAMARA and unlike the open-banking standards, DSDC's API work is industry-built.
    Adoption has to be earned on cost and friction, not compelled.

prior_standards:
  note: >-
    For most of NMFTA's history its standards were classification and coding rather than APIs —
    the NMFC freight classification, ClassIT+, SCAC carrier codes and SPLC location codes. The
    DSDC is the same institution doing the same job for the API layer.

gaps:
- >-
  No published roster. The DSDC names no council chairs, no officers and no member companies in
  text — participation is published only as a wall of member logos, which is what the coalition
  in companies/ was harvested from. There is no people layer to record.
- >-
  No governance page. /about-us returns 404 at the DSDC root; only the FTL council has an about
  page, and it references "Our Board Members" without naming them.