Less Than Truckload Shipping - Preparing Shipments For LTL Carriers

Preparing Shipments For LTL Carriers

Freight sent via LTL carriers must be handled several times during transit, often by different carriers. It must be packaged to protect it from scuffing, vibration, crushing, dropping, humidity, condensation. Thus it is normally good practice to load freight onto pallets or package freight into crates. Sturdy shipping containers such as corrugated fiberboard boxes are normally acceptable as well. Carriers have published tariffs that provide some guidance for packaging. Packaging engineers design and test packaging to meet the specific needs of the logistics system and the product being shipped.

Proper packaging freight serves several purposes:

• It helps protect the freight from handling and transit damage.
• It helps protect other freight from being damaged by your freight.
• It helps reduce package pilferage
• It helps to avoid loss situations; situations in which some of your freight is separated from the rest and lost in transit.

Since freight sent via LTL carriers is subject to misrouting or misloading it is a good practice to put the tracking number on each side of each piece of freight. If the destination state and zipcode are affixed to each side as well, misloading is less likely to occur. Even though it is not required it is good practice to affix a relatively large label including four letter carrier code, tracking number, destination station, and destination zipcode of the shipment (i.e. ABFS123456789 GA 30301). The easier it is for dockworkers to identify an individual shipment the less likely it is to be put in the wrong place. The value or type of contents should not be advertised on the package to help reduce losses. If the only piece of identification is the tracking number the dockworker will have a harder time identifying the shipments pieces and as such the chances of freight being loaded onto the wrong trailer is greater thereby increasing the transit time and also increasing the chances of the shipment being lost. Proper labels, bar codes, and RFID are important for proper routing and delivery.