Advice on shipping LTL freight
Why a class calculator is a starting point rather than a class, which accessorials are missing from your quote, and why invoices get re-rated. Three new articles a week.
Latest · September 11, 2026 · 7 min
How the LTL freight industry is organized, and why it behaves the way it does
Fourteen thousand eight hundred searches a month for the industry itself. Once you can see how it is put together, most of what shippers find strange about it stops being strange.
Read it→
September 9, 2026 · 6 min
Shipping pallet sizes, and why the dimensions cost more than the wood
The standard footprint exists because trailers, racks and forklifts were built around it. Departing from it is allowed, and it has consequences you pay for.
Read it→
September 7, 2026 · 7 min
What decides the cost of shipping a pallet
Class, density, distance, and then the list of things that happen at each end. The last list is where most of the surprises on an LTL invoice come from.
Read it→
September 4, 2026 · 7 min
The shipping pallet: how it has to be built to survive an LTL network
Your freight is handled at every terminal it passes through, and nobody there knows what is in the boxes. The pallet is the only instruction they get.
Read it→
August 21, 2026 · 7 min
How LTL freight shipping rates are actually built, layer by layer
There are no prices in this article, deliberately. What there is instead is the machine that produces every LTL rate, and once you can see it, every quote becomes legible.
Read it→
August 19, 2026 · 7 min
What a serious LTL freight shipping quote asks you for, and why
A cost per click of $25.14 says the industry knows exactly what this moment is worth. Almost none of that spending explains why a good quote asks so many questions.
Read it→
August 17, 2026 · 7 min
LTL freight shipping from your side of the dock: the life of one shipment
Eight thousand one hundred searches a month at a competition index of 0.05. The network side of the story has been told; this is the shipper side, stage by stage.
Read it→
August 13, 2026 · 6 min
Booking direct with a carrier, or through a broker: what each one gets you
Both are legitimate, and the honest comparison is not the one either side usually makes.
Read it→
August 10, 2026 · 6 min
Why there is no honest instant LTL rate calculator
The tools exist and they return numbers. What those numbers are missing is the same list every time.
Read it→
August 8, 2026 · 6 min
LTL, partial, or full truckload: where the crossover actually is
Six thousand six hundred searches a month at a competition index of 0.01. The answer is not a pallet count, and the handling risk matters as much as the rate.
Read it→
August 6, 2026 · 7 min
Why invoices get re-rated, and the four ways to make sure yours is not
The most common complaint in LTL, and it is almost never the carrier being opportunistic. It is the bill of lading being wrong.
Read it→
August 3, 2026 · 7 min
What an LTL service includes, and the accessorials that are not in your quote
Nine thousand nine hundred searches a month at a competition index of zero. Nobody is answering it, and the answer is mostly a list of things people did not know they needed.
Read it→
August 1, 2026 · 7 min
A freight class calculator gives you a starting point, not a class
Fourteen thousand eight hundred searches a month for a tool that cannot answer the question it is named after. Here is what it can and cannot do.
Read it→
July 30, 2026 · 8 min
What LTL actually is, and why the cross-dock explains every surcharge
Twenty-seven thousand searches a month, and a competition index of 0.04. Almost nobody is answering this, so here it is properly.
Read it→A quote built on measured figures
Four fields, then we measure the freight together. That is why our invoices match our quotes.
LTL Freight Match is a licensed freight broker. It quotes, books and manages less-than-truckload shipments, arranges the carrier, and handles the classification, the accessorials and the claim if one is needed.