If you normally ship dense product and you start buying empty packaging, your freight intuition will betray you. The rules you have internalised — small shipments are cheap, LTL scales smoothly, weight drives cost — are all approximately wrong for low-density freight.
How LTL pricing actually works
North American less-than-truckload rating has historically keyed off freight class, which is substantially a density calculation. Dense freight rates low and cheap; light, bulky freight rates high and expensive.
Knocked-down corrugated typically lands in class 150 to 250. A pallet of it weighs perhaps 300 pounds and occupies a full pallet position. You are consuming space and being rated as if you were consuming a premium.
| Freight | Weight per pallet | Space used | Rated class, typical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canned goods | 1,800 lb | 1 position | Low (cheap) |
| Bagged resin | 2,200 lb | 1 position | Low |
| Knocked-down shippers | 280 lb | 1 position | High (expensive) |
| Erected gaylords | 95 lb | 1 position | Very high |
The non-linear cost curve
Because you are buying positions rather than pounds, the cost curve has steps rather than a slope. Going from two pallets to four rarely doubles the cost. Going from six to twelve often reduces cost per pallet. The step changes sit at the mode boundaries.
On our Midwest lanes the crossover from LTL to partial truckload usually falls between six and eight pallets, and from partial to full truckload between fourteen and eighteen. Both move with fuel, season and lane direction, which is why we quote all three rather than assume.
The crossover nobody expects
At around twenty pallets, a full truckload of knocked-down boxes is frequently cheaper in total — not per unit, in total — than six pallets of erected ones. Buying considerably more can cost less. It feels wrong and it is routinely true.
On empty packaging, 'order less to spend less' is not reliably true.
Accessorials, where quotes go to die
The headline LTL rate is the part people compare. The accessorials are the part that determines the invoice.
- Liftgate, if your site has no dock. Commonly $75–$150 and frequently forgotten.
- Limited access or residential surcharges, which apply to more commercial addresses than people expect.
- Inside delivery, priced aggressively for bulky freight.
- Reclassification, if the carrier re-measures and disagrees with your declared density. On light freight this is a real risk.
- Redelivery, if nobody can receive a 26-foot trailer on the day it arrives.
- Detention, on drop-and-hook arrangements where yard space is tight.
We quote delivered, including accessorials, specifically so this list is our problem. If you are buying from a supplier who quotes FOB on empty packaging, you are accepting a lottery ticket.
Practical rules
- Under six pallets: LTL, and get the accessorials in writing.
- Six to fourteen: ask for partial truckload. Many suppliers will not offer it unless asked.
- Over fourteen: full truckload almost always wins.
- Continuous need: a standing order released from the supplier's yard gives you truckload economics on LTL-sized consumption. This is the single most common arrangement we have with repeat customers and the one most new buyers have never heard of.
- Always knocked down. The 8.6× cube ratio on a standard gaylord dwarfs every other variable.
Where reuse genuinely stops working
Beyond roughly 900 miles, LTL on low-density freight usually makes used packaging uneconomic against local new stock. We will say so rather than quote it. Trucking air across three states is not a good environmental trade either, and a supplier who will not tell you that is optimising for their invoice rather than your problem.
Our pieces are written by the people who do the work rather than by a content agency, which is why they contain more numbers and fewer adjectives than is fashionable. If a figure here does not match your experience, we would genuinely like to hear about it — two of our published coefficients have changed that way.