LTL sells you space on a trailer carrying other people freight. Truckload sells you the trailer. The switch between them is not a matter of taste: carriers publish the thresholds at which a shipment stops fitting the LTL model, and above those figures the questions change from class and accessorials to hours and appointments.
Past a certain floor space, sharing a trailer stops being the cheaper arrangement.
Two sets of published numbers bound this decision. One is federal and applies to every truck on the Interstate System. The other is the carrier own tariff, which says when a shipment has grown too large for the LTL network to price normally.
| Limit | Figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Gross vehicle weight on the Interstate System | 80,000 lb | Federal maximum described by the FHWA, enforced under 23 U.S.C. 127 and 23 CFR 658.21 |
| Single axle | 20,000 lb | Same federal maximums |
| Tandem axle | 34,000 lb | Same federal maximums |
| Capacity load by length | 20 linear feet or more of trailer | Old Dominion item 390 |
| Capacity load by weight | 20,000 lb or more of freight | Old Dominion item 390 |
The federal ceiling covers the whole vehicle, not the cargo. A tractor and a loaded trailer spend a large share of that 80,000 lb on themselves, which is why payload conversations happen well below the headline figure. The bridge formula, which the FHWA describes as requiring more axles or a longer wheelbase to carry more weight, can lower the limit further on a given configuration.
LTL rates a shipment by class because it has to divide one trailer fairly among many shippers. Buy the trailer and the carrier is selling time and distance instead, so density and classification lose most of their grip and the questions become where, when, and how long.
An LTL shipment is loaded, crossdocked at one or more terminals, and reloaded. A truckload is loaded once and unloaded once. For fragile or awkward goods that difference can be worth more than the rate, because handling is where damage happens.
Once a driver is dedicated to your load, time spent waiting is billable in a way it is not on an LTL pickup. Loading windows, unloading windows and who supplies the labour move from a footnote to a line item.
Between a few pallets and a full trailer, carriers price space by the linear foot rather than by class. Same network, same terminals, sold as a block of floor. When a shipment trips the capacity thresholds above, this is usually the conversation that follows rather than a jump straight to a dedicated trailer.
Our parcel calculator returned no rates at all for a 48 x 40 x 48 in pallet at 500 lb from Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922 to Dallas, TX 75201 on 2026-07-28. That is the edge of parcel, not the edge of LTL. A single pallet sits squarely in LTL territory, and a page pushing it toward a full trailer is selling something.
A truckload skips the terminals, but it still needs a dock or some way to get tens of thousands of pounds off a trailer at the far end. Where LTL would have added a lift gate charge, a full trailer simply cannot be unloaded, which is a worse outcome than a fee.
We sell US domestic parcel labels directly and route pallet and LTL requests to a person who prices them against carrier tariffs. We do not run trucks or terminals and we do not sell full truckload. If your load has grown past LTL, the useful thing we can do is tell you so and hand you the numbers a truckload carrier will ask for.
See what a truckload carrier asks for Read the LTL explainer Talk it through with a person
Once a shipment occupies enough of the trailer that LTL stops pricing it as shared space. Old Dominion treats shipments needing 20 linear feet or more, or weighing 20,000 pounds or more, as capacity loads, and that is where a full trailer becomes the honest comparison.
The FHWA gives the federal maximums on the Interstate System as 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, 20,000 pounds on a single axle and 34,000 pounds on a tandem axle. Payload is whatever is left after the tractor and trailer.
Far less. Classification exists to divide a shared trailer fairly; when one shipper takes the whole trailer, the price is built from distance, time and equipment instead.
No. We sell US domestic parcel labels and route pallet and LTL requests to a person. If a load needs a whole trailer we say so rather than quoting it as something else.