LTL Freight Shipping Basics
LTL stands for “less than truckload,” which is a shipping service ideal for small freight, products, and goods that do not require the use of a full truckload. LTL is a great option when shipping palletized or crated freight that weighs between 150 and 15,000 pounds.
When shipping LTL, you only pay for the portion of your freight’s space in a standard truck trailer. Pallets, crates, bundles, and other types of freight from many businesses are combined to create a full truckload shipment. Essentially, you are sharing the cost of a full truckload with other businesses.
These separate shipments are managed via a hub and spoke system, comparable to how air transportation works – LTL drivers will pick up freight from local businesses and then take it back to a terminal to be sorted and placed on the appropriate trailer for delivery. The cargo might be moved and sorted many times throughout its journey.
From?engines?and?transmissions?to furniture and machinery, less than truckload (LTL) freight can be defined as anything shipped in crates or on pallets. For example, durable items like bricks would be stacked on a pallet, while more fragile items, such as furniture, would be fully crated.
Most freight trailers on the road today are 8’ – 8.5’ wide, 12.5’ – 13.5’ high, and 40’ – 53’ long, allowing carriers to load several LTL shipments into a single truck and service multiple customers and destinations.
LTL freight carriers efficiently optimize loads to ensure max profit. For LTL carriers to earn the most money possible, they must carefully fit as much freight into the truck as they can.
Similarly, their organizational efforts end up saving you a lot of money; the more freight LTL carriers can neatly stack inside of a trailer, the better the price they can offer.
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LTL freight works by efficiently combining partial loads to create full truck loads. Once you’ve scheduled your shipment, your LTL carrier will come to your place of business to pick up your freight within a certain timeframe.
Then, your freight is taken back to the carrier’s local terminal, unloaded, and then loaded into another trailer en route to its final destination terminal. Lastly, the freight is unloaded at the final destination terminal; it is then put on another smaller truck to be delivered to the desired address.
With LTL transport, it is customary to reserve the trailer in advance. Jobs that have been scheduled early will be given preferential treatment over jobs ordered last minute. If there are any delays on the driver’s part, you will still owe for the transport cost, so it’s best to schedule ahead of time if possible.
As a rule of thumb, if your freight is on a pallet or in a crate, you can ship it LTL. However, each carrier has its restrictions on the commodities they will transport. If you are unsure about your cargo, be sure to check with your LTL carrier for more information. To determine if LTL freight shipping is right for you, ask yourself the following questions:
Additionally, less than truckload shipping is an ideal option when a business has a lot of freight that needs to be transported between the same locations on a quarterly or monthly basis.
Regardless of the size of your business, finding affordable LTL shipping rates can be extremely challenging and downright exhausting. uShip understands that as a business owner, navigating dozens of websites and making multiple phone calls just to compare shipping quotes is a waste of valuable time. Our freight shipping marketplace provides a straightforward way to run quotes from numerous LTL carriers with just a few clicks.
uShip is committed to helping users find the perfect carrier and has seen great success in pairing business shippers with LTL carriers. With an easy-to-use, tech-driven interface that allows users to identify the most cost-effective LTL carrier for their needs, uShip is revolutionizing how businesses ship their freight. Get started today by?comparing LTL freight quotes now .