Freight Forwarders

What is LTL Freight?

Filed under: transportation and logistics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — forwader

In response to the oft asked question, “What is LTL Freight?” here at Freight Forwarders we have the answer. First, it helps to demystify the acronym which will also reveal more of what LTL freight is. LTL stands for “Less than TruckLoad” with would indicate it has a lot to do with the amount of load space your goods will occupy on a truck or trailer.

So from this we can see that LTL freight is a smaller volume of goods for transport to any destination. What happens in this case is that if an individual or company needs to transport a consignment of goods but that consignment is less than that which would fill an entire trailer, then it is deemed LTL freight (also called LTL Shipment) and the transport company then has to find other customers wishing to also transport their own smaller volumes of goods to the same destination or a destination en route of the original load. This ensures costs are kept to a minimum, the savings of which are passed on in part to the customers.

If however, a load cannot be filled prior to the transport’s departure date, then the customer requesting the transport will have to pay the cost of a full load. This doesn’t happen very often, thankfully as the customer is made aware of the circumstances and is generally disposed to postpone departure by a few days in order to fulfill the load requirements to get their costs at the best rate.

LTL shipments generally weigh anywhere between 100 and 10,000 lbs. Pickup and delivery drivers tend to have set routes which they travel several times every week. This enables the driver to develop a rapport with his regular customers. As soon as the driver has loaded his trailer or finished his assigned route, he will return to the depot to unload. The truck’s trailer is unloaded and all the individual shipments which are marked as such are weighed and inspected in order to verify they conform to the description set out in the accompanying paperwork.

All LTL freight is subjected to inspection, although not all freight is necessarily inspected. Once the inspection has been completed, each section of freight is loaded onto an outbound trailer. This is then be forwarded to what is known as a breakbulk (a shipping term for loose material to be loaded), a connection, or to the delivering depot.

For your information, an LTL shipment may only be handled once while in transit. However, it may be handled multiple times prior to its final delivery. The major advantage of using an LTL freight carrier is that a customer’s shipment can be transported at a fraction of the cost incurred when hiring an entire truck and trailer, which you’d need for an exclusive shipment.

Freight Forwarders

Trucking Freight

Filed under: transportation and logistics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — forwader

Freight forwarders use many different methods of transporting goods from pick up to destination. For transportation of freight across land, there is none so heavily used or more versatile than the big trucks that are a permanent fixture on highways and town roads. This article takes a look at the role that big trucks play in the grand scheme of the transportation and logistics industry, their strengths and weaknesses and the reasons why they are so in demand as a viable means of trucking freight.

First of all, the industry is driven by experienced transportation professionals who are organized and highly knowledgeable about all aspects of heavy goods haulage managed by the big truck freight companies, freight forwarding companies and general shipping, transportation and logistics experts. They are well versed in the entire process of ensuring a client’s goods are collected, transported and delivered in the most efficient way possible with the minimum of fuss and the maximum amount of professionalism.

When a customer contacts a professional transport or freight broker with a view to transporting goods from one place to another, whether it be across town or from one side of the country to the other, the wheels are set in motion to find the most cost effective and time efficient method of achieving that. Often, this will mean using trucking freight as the most viable method, especially when pickup and/or delivery locations are situated well out of reach of freight train lines, which are more cost effective when the pickup and delivery points are close by and the transfer of good can be done swiftly.

Otherwise, its the job of the big trucks to haul the load from pickup to destination and this process is surprisingly quick, efficient and safe.

From a customer point of view, most of the freight company workings are transparent. They are often, but not always there to see the goods loaded onto the truck and sometimes are able to be there when the truck arrives at the destination and see the good unloaded from the truck and taken into the premises. But a whole lot more goes on that the customer is blissfully unaware of. Which is fine, as its usually not necessary to know what else is going on, as long as the truck arrives on time, leaves on time and then arrives at its destination on time with all the customer’s goods intact and in one piece.

What does go on behind the scenes is a whole process of calculations to arrive at a costing price. This includes time tracking, route determination, obstacles along teh route such as low bridges, steep inclines, narrow roads etc and traffic flow estimation for the journey. It also includes load size calculations, load space allocations, driver allocation and helper number calculation and most suitable truck/trailer dimensions calculation so that the right size vehicle is matched to the pre-determined load volume and weight. There are also calculations of estimated fuel usage, mileage, vehicle wear and tear for the proposed journey, whether there is a return load to lower cost per mile. All these things are factored into the overall calculations to arrive at the cost to the transportation company plus their expenses and profit margin, before a final price can be quoted to the customer.

All these calculations are done using state of the art computer technology, so the customer isn’t kept waiting on the phone, or standing around in the freight broker’s office for very long at all.

Once a price is quoted and the customer agrees on this, then all that needs to be done is to set the date for collection of the goods and the delivery time estimate will have already been worked out forward from the collection time. Simple!

So next time you are considering the transportation of some of your belongings, whether they be personal items, household items large or small, or business or office equipment, furniture or other items you can rest assured that everything will be taken care of in the most professional and efficient manner possible. A well respected trucking freight transportation company that will provide your freight shipping services for road freight forwarding can do this because it’s their business to do it!

Freight Forwarders

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