How to Ship a Pallet: A Small Brand's First LTL Shipment

Updated November 2026

A first pallet usually shows up as a deadline: a retailer's purchase order, a move into a 3PL, an Amazon inbound, a restock too heavy to keep sending as parcels. Somewhere between 300 and 1,500 lb has to leave at once, from a garage, a studio, a storage unit or a small office with no loading dock and no forklift. That last detail matters more than anything else here. A pallet ships as less-than-truckload (LTL) freight, and an LTL quote prices the truck's trip. The charges that turn a quote into a bigger invoice come from the two addresses, and they're predictable if you declare them when you book.

Parcel or pallet

The hard line belongs to the parcel carriers. UPS treats a single package over 150 lb as freight, caps a package at 165 inches in length and girth combined, and puts a heavy-package sticker and a possible extra fee on anything over 70 lb. FedEx Ground's limits are 150 lb, 108 inches long and 165 inches in length plus girth. One carton past those numbers isn't a parcel at any price; the limits are per package, so a stack of 40 lb cartons stays parcel-eligible however much it weighs together.

Below the limits it's arithmetic plus the receiver's rules. Price the stack both ways: the parcel total, including the heavy-package fees on any carton over 70 lb, against an LTL quote with your real address types declared. Then check who's receiving. Retailer distribution centers write pallet, label and appointment rules into their routing guides, a 3PL has receiving rules of its own, and Amazon's partnered-carrier LTL program accepts floor-loaded or palletized shipments, with its own rules for the pallets it does take (40 by 48 inch wood, four-way access), so confirm the configuration your booking offers before you build; our guide to floor-loaded and palletized freight covers the tradeoff. If the receiver wants a pallet, the parcel math is moot.

This page assumes one pallet or a few. Once an order starts to fill a good part of a trailer, LTL vs FTL covers where a full truck begins to make sense.

What an LTL quote is made of

An LTL rate has three layers. The base rate comes from the lane (origin and destination ZIP codes), the weight and the freight class, discounted off the carrier's tariff by whatever your account or your broker has negotiated. A fuel surcharge sits on top. Then come the accessorials: separate charges for anything beyond a dock-to-dock move, such as a liftgate, a residential address, a delivery appointment or a second delivery attempt. FreightCenter's list of what sets an LTL rate is the same four things: class, weight and dimensions, lane distance and accessorial services.

The per-pallet price ranges that quote sites advertise tell you nothing until your lane, weight, class and both addresses are in. Get two or three quotes with everything declared, and compare the totals, not the base rates.

Where the extra charges come from

Freight pricing assumes a dock at each end and a forklift to load the trailer. A house, a storage unit or a studio in a retail strip can each trigger a charge under a carrier's rules, and each carrier publishes its own. Estes' accessorial schedule, in the revision effective November 17, 2025, lists these. They're one named carrier's published list charges, not what LTL costs everywhere.

The minimums are what hurt on a small shipment. Take a 500 lb pallet picked up from your house. Residential service at $8.50 per 100 lb comes to $42.50, which is under the $75 minimum, so $75 applies. The liftgate at $4.95 per 100 lb comes to $24.75, also under its $75 minimum, so that's another $75. At Estes' list charges, that is $150 on top of the base rate before the pallet has left your driveway. A negotiated account or a broker's rate can price those differently, and other carriers set their own. Old Dominion's rules tariff, for instance, charges residential pickup or delivery at $7.20 per 100 lb with a $125 minimum, applied separately at pickup and at delivery, and its liftgate charge is $4.40 per 100 lb with a $115 minimum. It also treats a self-storage unit as its own category, at $5 per 100 lb with a $70 minimum, and it spares you a separate notification charge if the bill of lading already names the unit and a contact number.

Two more things hide in those rules. At a residence the carrier's job ends at the truck; Old Dominion's rule is that freight is delivered adjacent to the trailer, and carrying it inside is a separate item. And if the delivery address has no dock either, the same charges can apply at that end too.

Declare it when you book

Old Dominion's guide to accessorial charges says why the invoice grows after the fact. A liftgate "must be requested in advance, as not all trucks have one". Some charges "are only triggered once the driver arrives on site", such as detention, reweighs or redelivery, and so "they can sometimes be added after the shipment is completed". The fix is dull and effective: weigh and measure the finished pallet before you fill out the rate request or the bill of lading, so nothing changes when the carrier reweighs or remeasures it.

Your quote request and your bill of lading should both carry:

• The address type at each end: business with a dock, business without one, residence, self-storage facility, school, construction site or anything else a tariff might call limited access.
• A liftgate at each end that has no dock.
• Whether the receiver needs an appointment or a call ahead, and a phone number for someone at each end.
• The pickup window, and whether your location can only receive during certain hours.
• The outside dimensions of the loaded pallet, including the pallet itself, and the total weight with the pallet included.
• The freight class, or the density you based it on.

Freight class, and why the carrier's tape measure wins

Freight class comes from the commodity's NMFC item, and since July 2025 many items are rated by density: the weight of the loaded pallet divided by its cubic feet, pallet and packaging included. The NMFC's density scale has run 13 steps since July 2025, from class 400 under 1 lb per cubic foot down to class 50 at 50 and up. A 48 by 40 inch pallet loaded 48 inches high is 53.3 cubic feet, so at 500 lb it's about 9.4 lb per cubic foot, which on that scale estimates to class 100, the step for 8 to just under 10. Our freight class calculator does that math from your dimensions and shows how close you sit to the next line; check the commodity's NMFC item to confirm the density scale applies to your goods.

The lines are sharp. NMFTA's own example: a pallet at 15.0 lb per cubic foot ships at class 70, and the same pallet at 14.9 ships at class 85. The carrier's measurement is the one that counts. If the pallet comes out taller or lighter than you declared and that moves it across a line, the carrier can reclass it and bill the difference; NMFTA's own warning is reclassification, back charges or delays, and whether a carrier dimensions your freight at all is set by your contract. NMFTA's packaging advice is to design the load to land about 5% above the threshold you're aiming for, which in practice means a shorter, tighter stack rather than a tall, airy one. Some commodities carry a fixed class regardless of density; the glossary entry explains how the NMFC item decides. Class applies to LTL freight, not to parcels.

Building a pallet the carrier will accept

FedEx's pallet packing guide is a clear set of rules to build to, and your receiver's routing guide may add its own:

• Use a 40 by 48 inch GMA pallet, and a new one rather than a damaged or repaired one.
• Never let cartons overhang the edges; FedEx puts the loss of compression strength at as much as 32%, and an overhanging corner is what the forklift catches.
• Column-stack cartons corner over corner and put corrugated pads between tiers. Don't pyramid the top; it leaves no level surface and crushes the top cartons.
• Wrap with 70-gauge stretch film that sticks to itself, tight enough that the load and the pallet move as one unit.
• If you band, run the banding under the bottom deck boards and keep it out of the forklift notches.
• Over 1,500 lb, use a hardwood pallet and blocking.

Keep the load inside the receiver's height limit, put a label with the consignee, the PO or reference number and the piece count on at least two sides, and photograph the finished pallet before it's wrapped and after. Our pallet sizes article has the other common footprints, and if the order runs to several pallets the pallet calculator works out how they fit in a trailer and how many linear feet you'll be quoted on.

The bill of lading

Federal rules require a motor carrier to issue a receipt or bill of lading for freight it takes across state lines, listing the shipper and consignee, origin and destination, the number of packages, a description of the freight and its weight. In practice the shipper fills it out and the driver signs it at pickup, and it becomes your receipt, your contract with the carrier and the document a claim is built on. The glossary entry explains the parts; our bill of lading generator fills in a clean PDF, including the VICS layout some retailers ask for.

Three fields deserve care. Write the piece count the way the receiver will count it, for example "1 pallet, 24 cartons", so a short count is provable. Record the dimensions and weight you measured. And read the declared value and liability terms before you sign: federal law lets a carrier limit its liability to a value the shipper declares or agrees to in writing, so a cheap released rate can mean a small recovery if the pallet is lost.

Pickup day

Have the pallet on firm, level ground the truck can pull up to. With a liftgate, the driver brings a pallet jack down on the gate, rolls it under the pallet and lifts it; a gravel drive or a stepped doorway defeats that, and Old Dominion's tariff lets a driver decline a liftgate job that's impractical or unsafe. Be reachable by phone, have the bill of lading printed in duplicate, and get the driver's signed copy before the truck leaves. Carriers allow a free loading window and then bill detention; Estes, for one, charges $40 for each 15 minutes past free time on shipments under 20,000 lb, so have the pallet ready, not half-wrapped.

Delivery: the receiver's rules

A retailer's distribution center will expect the appointment, labels and paperwork in its routing guide, which also says what a missed slot costs you. A 3PL will want an advance ship notice before the truck arrives; how to send inventory to a 3PL walks through the ASN, carton labels and what the dock actually counts. A home or storage-unit delivery needs the contact name and phone number on the bill of lading; Old Dominion's rules, for one, require an arrival notice and an agreed time before a residential delivery is attempted. When nobody can take the freight, the tariffs charge for the redelivery and for the days it sits at the terminal.

Damage, shortage and the invoice that grew

If the pallet arrives short or damaged, note it on the delivery receipt before signing, with photos, and then file a written claim. Both steps matter. Under 49 CFR 370.3, a claim has to be in writing, identify the shipment, assert that the carrier is liable and state a specific or determinable amount; a notation of shortage or damage on the delivery receipt, by itself, doesn't count as a claim. For a truck move across state lines, federal law makes the carrier liable for the actual loss, subject to any liability limit in the terms you agreed to, and the carrier can't give you less than nine months to file.

If the invoice comes in above the quote, ask for the reason line by line. For a reweigh or reclass, ask for the carrier's inspection or measurement record and check it against the dimensions and weight on your bill of lading and your photos. An accessorial you never declared is harder to argue, which is why the booking checklist above exists.

When pallets become a regular thing

If this is a one-off, the steps above are the whole job. If retailer purchase orders start arriving every month, the expensive part is the pickup from a building that was never meant for freight. Simpl's B2B wholesale fulfillment ships wholesale and retail orders from the same Austin inventory as your parcel orders, with EDI, retail routing guides, retail packing slips and ASNs handled. Freight varies by weight and destination, so a pallet to a distribution center is quoted differently than a parcel to a shopper. For inbound stock, we ask for standard 40 by 48 pallets within the height limit in our receiving guidelines, with the ASN steps in the guide linked above. If a broker is already quoting your freight, 3PL vs freight broker covers who does what when both are involved.