Truck shadow

Truck shadow is the point in a warehouse where goods have been prepared for a specific delivery but have not yet been loaded. Physically it is usually a marked floor area near the dock. In the system it is a status, and that is the more useful way to think about it.

Treating it as a status rather than a location is what keeps the numbers honest. A pallet in truck shadow is still standing in the building and still counts in a physical inventory, but it has been promised to a customer, so it is deliberately excluded from available stock. Anyone asking what can still be sold gets an answer that already accounts for it.

This is where the gap between a total and a usable figure usually comes from. A stock report that shows more than a picker can actually take is often correct: the difference is sitting in truck shadow, blocked, or in quarantine. Reports that separate those states let a manager answer the question that was actually asked instead of the one the number happened to match.