LTL Basics
Have you ever had a bunch of shipping that you needed to do? It was more than would fit inside of a small box, and it's not so much that you could buy an entire truck? LTL fits that middle need. It is a type of shipping that does run full trucks across the country. But the difference is that LTL takes a pallet or a few from you with other customers who also have one or a few pallets. Because it combines clients' parcels, the LTL option is cheaper than truckload.
In less than truckload shipping, you don't buy the entire truck. And it's more efficient than shipping one box at a time when you have a lot of them to ship. As a matter of fact, a lot of truckload carriers have LTL networks. The idea is they'll pick up a pallet from you, two pallets from your neighbor, three or four pallets elsewhere in the city. They'll bring them back to a dock, combine them on another truck, and start across the country. Then, by the time it gets to the other destination, they do that in reverse. Now they separate the parcels to deliver to your customer and to your neighbor's customer.
Overloading LTL Will Cost More
There are some common oversights with less than truckload shipments. Number one, often people try to send too much into an LTL network. Shipping, transportation, and logistics are simple, but at the same time complex concepts. So, you need experts who understand all the rules of the road for each of these types of freight movements. Lojistic has its TMS, which also makes a lot of big decisions for you.
It will catch errors like shipping too much into an LTL network. They have rules. If you try to ship, say, more than six pallets in a single LTL shipment, they'll do it for you. But they will also charge an enormous amount of money for it. This is so they can have smaller shipments in their network because that's more efficient. That way they can charge a lot less. So, to discourage sending too much through there, they will overcharge for it. You have the benefit of us analyzing those shipments when you use services from Lojistic. Our system will send us an alert if you are making an error such as overloading an LTL service. We will actually intercept that shipment and make sure that we route it the most effective way.
How it Compares to Other Shipping
LTL is in a class by itself in regards to efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This is because it moves less than truckload shipments. This is particularly true for domestic shipments. There are alternatives to that. For instance, you could ship an enormous number of parcel shipments to do the same thing. Chances are that's going to be expensive. You can try to ship very large items through the parcel carrier networks. They're going to charge you an enormous surcharge for doing that. They don't want those shipments in their network.
Another alternative is air freight. Some years ago, most shippers removed themselves from the air freight network. An exception to that is international air freight shipping. So there isn't a good, inexpensive, and efficient alternative to LTL other than LTL. The best you can do is get the best logistics system, logistics company to support it to work with you. You have experts on your side to make sure that you're making the best possible use of all the shipping modes.