Less-Than-Truckload Freight (LTL) is a money-saving benison for any small business.

What is LTL though? And how does it help your shipping needs?

Can I Get a Ride?

Remember when you were in college and didn’t have a car? But the kid you barely knew from your high school had one and you’d hop in a ride with them back to your hometown whenever break rolled around?

You had to save money on getting around without your own car, even if it meant listening to your fellow road warrior drone on about Battlestar Galactica for 3½ hours. You did what you had to in order to get to your destination, and of course you threw in $5 (even though gas cost the driver $25 door-to-door).

You were effectively LTL. And when you ship LTL, this is what you subject your shipments to, just without the horrible conversation. You save money with LTL shipping options, as important today as it was when you were 19. And not because you’re a broke college kid without a job, but because you’re trying to run a tight ship and turn a handsome profit.

Less-Than-Truckload Freight & How it Works

Your shipments essentially hitch a ride on a truck already headed in that direction anyway when shipping LTL. These trucks are loaded with shipments other than yours, either sharing a final destination or the direction the truckload is headed. The latter will be distributed at stops along the way.

And because the only thing your shipments have in common is one direction, your crate of customized Boston Celtics socks headed to California could be wedged between a pallet of organic dog food going to Kansas City and a load of jigsaw puzzles to be dropped in Denver.

But the idea is whatever load you’re allowed to haul with your Less-Than-Truckload Freight provider cannot take a full truckload (otherwise it wouldn’t be LESS than a truckload and would just be called “FTL”). Having full truckloads freighted is a completely different blog post we haven’t written yet– stay tuned!

And because you share your haul with so many other kinds of products, the bottom line is you drive down your shipping costs. That’s because LTL shipment arrangements allow you to split the cost of hauling all the freight with other contributing customers.

LTL Saves Time, Resources & Money

LTL is your answer when you need to ship more than just envelopes and packages. It lets you move larger items on pallets as the best shipping method for your money. And simplifying your operations with a third party vendor is often helpful for saving time and money, helping take the haggle out of finding the lowest price in a shipping provider.

Third-party services, such as ShipTime.com, allow you to compare and choose the most trusted freight carriers in North America to keep your freight costs low as possible. Shiptime.com works in conjunction with express courier providers and special loyalty programs. They take care of all the details with turn-key and fully supported programs.

Learn more here.