Field guide

LTL stands for less-than-truckload. It means your freight rides in a trailer with other shippers’ freight. You pay for the space and weight you use, not the whole truck.

Full-truckload is the alternative. You buy out a 53-foot trailer for a single shipment. Faster, more expensive, only worth it if you have enough freight to fill it. Most small businesses don’t.

LTL trades a day or two for a much lower bill. The truck stops at a few terminals along the way. Your freight gets sorted at each one. Sometimes it spends a night on a dock. That’s normal, and it’s why a Cedar Rapids to Des Moines run that would take a car ninety minutes is quoted as one business day.

NMFC class is the four-digit shorthand the freight industry uses to price your shipment. It runs from class 50 to class 500. Lower is cheaper.

Class is set by four factors. Density (pounds per cubic foot) does most of the work. Stowability is whether your freight stacks cleanly. Handling is whether it’s fragile or awkward. Liability is the dollar risk if it gets damaged.

The rule of thumb: dense, sturdy, low-value freight is class 50 to 100. Bulky, fragile, or expensive freight climbs from there. A pallet of bricks is class 50. A pallet of stuffed animals takes up the same space but weighs almost nothing, so it bills like class 250.

Five legs, in order. Most regional LTL shipments hit all of them inside two business days. The PRO number on your bill of lading is what you track. It gets scanned at every leg.

Accessorials are the line items that get added when your shipment needs something beyond a standard dock-to-dock pickup or delivery. They’re not surprise fees. They cover real labor, time, or equipment. Tell us up front which ones apply and the quote stays the quote.

Most damage claims trace back to two things: pallets that fell apart in transit and freight that wasn’t shrink-wrapped down to the pallet. Both are avoidable.

Use new four-way pallets when you can. Stack to the corners, not pyramid-style. Don’t overhang the pallet edge by more than an inch. Shrink-wrap vertically and horizontally, five revolutions minimum, including the pallet boards themselves so the load and the pallet are one piece. Corner boards on top and along vertical edges take pressure off the box corners and stop side loads from caving.

If your freight is fragile, expensive, or both, build a crate. A simple plywood crate adds maybe forty dollars in materials and routinely saves a four-figure damage claim.

A short list. Most freight rides LTL without an issue. These are the ones where you should call before booking, not after.