Dr. B’s Truck Glossary-LTL, Not lightspeed, but less expensive

Less than truckload or LTL is another term that was new to me when I started writing here, but it is a concept that isn’t that foreign. There are going to be times when a business or individual has a big shipment that is short of needing a whole semi to itself but is too big to be easily sent via UPS or FedEx; 100 pounds is the general cutoff point for the usual package suspects. That’s where a LTL transport firm will come in, where they will combine a number of smaller shipments and deliver them to their destinations.

My inner sci-fi geek wants to say that LTL doesn’t move FTL; since your sharing truck space with multiple shipments, the truck your shipment is on might swing by other customers’ sites for pickups or deliveries. Also, your shipment might need to change trucks at a central location to get to its final destination. Since you’re not going to go straight from your place to the destination, it will take a bit longer.

LTL shipments can go not just to standard warehouse docks designed for trucks, but can be delivered to residential addresses and other locales. This gives LTL flexibility that standard trucks don’t have.

However, you’re going to want to organize your shipment in as few containers as possible. Shrink-wrapping a number of boxes into one large pallet can both cut costs and help secure your shipment, as the LTL folks will be charging in part by the number of containers.