A trailer shared by many shippers. A bill split by all of them.
The workhorse mode for freight too big for parcel and too small for a full truck.
Less-than-Truckload (LTL)shipping moves freight that doesn’t need an entire trailer — typically 1 to 10 pallets, or 150 to 15,000 pounds. Instead of booking a 53′ trailer for a handful of pallets, your shipment shares deck space with freight from dozens of other shippers, and you pay only for the portion of the trailer you occupy. For the enormous middle of North American commerce — distributors restocking stores, manufacturers shipping components, e-commerce brands replenishing fulfillment centers — LTL is the default mode.
The economics work because national LTL carriers run hub-and-spoke networks: a local pickup-and-delivery (P&D) truck collects your pallets and brings them to an origin terminal, where dock crews consolidate them with other freight heading the same direction onto a line-haul trailer. That trailer runs terminal-to-terminal — sometimes through a regional break-bulk hub — until your pallets reach the destination terminal, where another P&D truck makes the final delivery. Each line-haul trailer carries 15–30 shipments, so every shipper pays a fraction of what a dedicated truck would cost. The trade-off is extra handling and a transit window measured in days, not hours.
When does LTL beat parcel and FTL?
Two break-even points define LTL’s territory. The first sits around 150 pounds: below it, ground parcel (UPS, FedEx) is almost always cheaper; above it, palletizing the freight and shipping LTL wins on cost per pound — and dramatically cuts damage risk, because pallets move by forklift instead of bouncing down parcel conveyors. The second break-even sits around 6–8 pallets: above that, class charges and accessorials stack up until a dedicated full truckload becomes both cheaper and faster. The 1–6 pallet, 150–15,000 lb middle is where LTL is unbeatable.
How is LTL priced?
LTL pricing starts with the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) — a standardized system of 18 freight classes from 50 to 500, maintained by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association. Your class is determined by four characteristics: density (pounds per cubic foot — the dominant factor), stowability (does it nest, stack, or waste deck space?), handling (fragile, awkward, needs special equipment?), and liability(theft-prone, perishable, prone to damaging adjacent freight?). Class 50 freight — dense, durable, palletized — ships at the lowest rate per pound; class 500 freight — feather-light and bulky — can cost eight times more on the same lane. On top of class come the carrier’s base linehaul tariff for the mileage, a weekly-indexed fuel surcharge, and any accessorial services the pickup or delivery requires.
Increasingly, carriers also offer density-based (dimensional) pricing that skips the NMFC lookup entirely and rates the shipment on measured cube and weight — the same DIM-weight logic parcel networks use. Qeep prices every shipment under both models across multiple carriers and books whichever combination is cheapest for your lane.
Why accurate freight class matters
Every major LTL terminal runs certified scales and dimensioner arches, and carriers audit aggressively. If your declared class, weight or dimensions don’t match what the dimensioner measures, the carrier issues a reweigh/reclass adjustment— you pay the corrected (higher) rate plus an inspection fee, typically weeks after delivery, on an invoice that no longer matches your quote. It’s the single biggest source of LTL billing pain. Qeep eliminates it by classifying from your actual commodity description and verified dimensions before pickup, and by disputing incorrect carrier adjustments automatically when the data is on your side.
