LTL Freight for Manufacturers & Distributors
You ship the same pallets down the same lanes, week after week. That repetition is your advantage: get the freight class and the pallet pattern right once per SKU and every future tender prices the same. Here is how to lock it in — and when a growing order stops being LTL.
Consistency is the whole game
A distributor’s freight is predictable in a way an e-commerce seller’s never is: the same products, the same cartons, the same destinations. The saving is not in hunting a cheap rate each time — it is in making every shipment identical so it prices identically and the invoice never surprises you.
- Lock the freight class per SKU. Once you know the density of a built pallet of one product, its class does not change from shipment to shipment — record it and stop re-deriving it every time.
- Standardize the pallet pattern. A fixed cartons-per-layer and layers-per-pallet (your TI-HI) makes every tender identical: same dimensions, same weight, same class, same rate.
- Consolidate lanes. Shipping to the same region on the same day? Two or three orders on one BOL usually beats separate tenders, and it moves you toward volume pricing.
Class comes from density, so palletize for it
Since the July 2025 NMFC change, most freight is classed by density — pounds per cubic foot. For a manufacturer that is a design decision, not a lookup: how you build the pallet sets the class. A tighter, heavier pallet of the same product rides at a lower class and a lower rate, and because you ship it constantly, one class saved compounds across every lane all year.
Work out the density of a built pallet, then read its class:
When the order outgrows LTL
Standard LTL is priced by class up to a point. Past roughly 6 pallets, 12 linear feet, or about 10,000 lb, carriers offer volume LTL — a negotiated rate for a big block of space — and past that a full truckload can be cheaper than paying LTL for most of a trailer. Knowing which band an order lands in tells you which quote to even ask for.
What the receiver adds to the bill
Dock-to-dock B2B skips most of the accessorials an e-commerce seller pays — but the receiving end has its own. These are set by where and how you deliver, so confirm them with the consignee before you quote:
- Delivery appointment — a retail DC or a busy warehouse gives you a scheduled dock window, and a missed one means redelivery fees.
- Notify before delivery — the receiver wants a call ahead so they can staff the dock.
- Limited access — some receivers (mines, farms, military bases, some job sites) are billed as limited-access even though they run docks.
- Retail compliance — big-box DCs enforce routing guides, pallet specs and label placement; a non-compliant delivery gets charged back.
Build each lane once, reuse it forever
FreightPrep turns your cartons into pallets, computes the freight class of each, and builds a copy-ready LTL summary you can paste into FedEx Freight, LTL Select and other carriers. Save a lane’s pattern and every reorder tenders the same — free, and everything runs in your browser.
Every free tool on one page
Disclaimer
Estimates only. Final freight class and rates are set by the carrier and the NMFTA — the carrier can reweigh and reclassify at pickup, and a commodity’s specific NMFC item number may override a density-based class. This page is general guidance for manufacturers and distributors, not a rate quote.