LTL shipping rates

Cerasis continues our series on LTL shipping by making sure you are aware of what factors make up LTL freight rates. The better you understand what goes into LTL freight rates, the easier it is for you to manage expectations as well as prepare your freight shipment processes to get the longest term savings on resources and costs in your transportation department.

Tomorrow, we will continue our series making sure to cover what are the characteristics or factors that make up LTL Freight class. This information is vital in making sure you get the best and most accurate LTL freight rates when choosing to ship LTL.

LTL shipments typically weigh between 151 and 20, 000 lbs. LTL carriers will usually apply a discount on shipments as the freight moves up in weight, meaning there are various "weight break" discounts an LTL carrier may give. Shipments larger than 5 pallets can still ship with an LTL carrier but these moves are normally considered volume moves and are spot quoted by the carrier’s rate department.

LTL freight rates can be very confusing. Unlike truckload which has rates usually based on a per-mile rate or a price per-hundred weight plus a fuel charge, many factors regulate LTL rates which will most definitely impact the cost of a shipment.

Less-than-truckload (LTL) mode of shipping is used for smaller shipments that are too large to be sent as parcel but too small to fill an entire truckload. LTL carriers collect freight from various shippers and consolidate that freight onto trailers for line-haul to the delivering terminal or to a hub terminal where the freight will be further sorted and consolidated for additional line-hauls.

In most cases, drivers start the day by loading up and heading out to make deliveries first, then begin making pickups once the trailer has been emptied for return to the terminal for sorting and delivery next day; thus, most pickups are made in the afternoon and most deliveries are performed in the morning.