Which base tariff was named
Two agreements can both promise the same reduction and land far apart, because each names a different base rate tariff to take the reduction from. The percentage is meaningless until you know the grid it applies to.
Freight pricing
What an LTL freight rate is made of
Feed a pallet into any freight rate calculator and it hands back a band rather than a price. The reason is structural: roughly half the inputs that produce a real LTL number sit in a private pricing agreement, and the other half sit in rules tariffs that anybody can download. This page walks the public half, so you can see which part of the quote you are able to move. Central Transport, R+L Carriers and XPO supplied the tariff language, all three of them read 2026-07-29.
Three tariffs, datedRate mechanics, not guessesPallets priced by a person
Two axes and a contract
Class picks the column, weight picks the row, and your agreement decides what the cell is multiplied by.
The table the rate comes out of
Every class-rated LTL price starts life in a grid. Columns are freight classes; rows are weight breaks; each cell is a price per hundred pounds. R+L Carriers happens to print one of these grids inside its public rules tariff, for a short list of Washington harbor points, and its shape is the shape of the private ones: eighteen class columns running 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 77.5, 85, 92.5, 100, 110, 125, 150, 175, 200, 250, 300, 400 and 500, six weight rows, and a line underneath reading “Rates in dollars and cents per 100 lbs.” The tariff was updated 07/09/2026 and read on 2026-07-29. We are not reproducing the figures in it; the useful part is the frame.
The row labels are trade shorthand, and XPO defines them in the abbreviation list of tariff CNWY 350-N, effective March 20, 2026 and read the same day: “L5C — Less than 500 lbs.”, with M standing for thousands of pounds and Cwt. for hundredweight. Read the grid with those two keys and the arithmetic is a single multiplication: the cell price, times the weight divided by one hundred.
| Row label | Where the row starts | What the price per hundred pounds does |
|---|---|---|
| L5C | Anything under 500 lb | The dearest row on the grid |
| 5C | 500 lb | Drops below L5C in every class column |
| 1M | 1,000 lb | Drops again |
| 2M | 2,000 lb | Drops again |
| 5M | 5,000 lb | Drops again |
| 10M | 10,000 lb | The cheapest row, roughly a quarter of the L5C figure in the same column |
Two consequences follow immediately. Adding weight to a light shipment can move it into a cheaper row, and a shipment that sits a few pounds under a row boundary is paying the dearer rate on every pound it has. That second situation is common enough to have its own rule, which is the next section.
Where 1,900 lb costs more than 2,000 lb
Central Transport publishes the obligation in one sentence. Item 595 of rules tariff CT100-CB, effective March 9, 2026 and read 2026-07-29, is headed Alternate Application of Rates and Weights and reads: “In no case shall the charge for any LTL shipment be greater than the charge for a greater quantity of the same kind of freight at the rate and weight applicable to such greater quantity of freight.”
Work the grid and the effect is easy to picture. Take a load sitting just under the 2,000 lb boundary. Rated where it actually falls, it pays the 1M price on every hundred pounds it carries. Rated as though it weighed 2,000 lb, it pays a materially lower price on a slightly larger number, and on the R+L grid the drop between those two rows is wide enough that the second calculation wins by roughly a fifth in the middle classes. The rule says the carrier bills the lower of the two. Old hands call it bumping, or rating up.
Not every carrier still carries its own version of the rule in its own book. R+L's rules tariff lists an item named Bumping Clause (Non-application) that now reads only “CANCELLED EFFECTIVE JANUARY 1, 2020”, and its own Alternate Application of Rates and Weights item was removed on November 1, 2022 with a pointer to item 640 of the National Motor Freight Classification. The mechanism did not go away; it moved into the classification the tariff governs itself by. What that means at the desk is simple. If a quote lands within a couple of hundred pounds under a break, ask the carrier for the price at the break as well, and ask which of the two the invoice will carry.
The half of the number no tariff shows you
A class rate grid is a starting price, not a price. Between the grid and the invoice sit a pricing agreement, a commodity grouping, a floor and a percentage, and all four are capable of moving the total more than the freight itself does.
Who is paying, and when
R+L states that on inbound collect shipments the debtor region applies, using the inbound collect terms rather than the shipper's. The same pallet on the same lane therefore prices differently depending on which end of it holds the account.
Paying late can undo it
The same tariff requires payment of reduced-rate invoices within 45 days, and states that failure to comply voids both the reduction and the commodity grouping, with the billing reworked on published class rates.
Underneath all of it is a floor. Every LTL carrier publishes an absolute minimum charge that no shipment bills below, which is why a percentage against a grid can stop mattering entirely on a small load. Two carriers' published floors, with their tariff item numbers, are laid out on our pallet shipping rates page, and the order the charges stack in is walked line by line in reading a freight quote.
Fuel is a percentage, and there is more than one of them
The fuel line on an LTL invoice is not a fixed amount and not a carrier's opinion. R+L states the basis plainly in item 563: “The amount of the fuel surcharge is determined by the U.S. National average Fuel Index as published by the U.S. Department of Energy.” The index is announced each Monday and the surcharge moves the following Wednesday; when Monday is a holiday the next non-holiday business day's index is used instead. The percentage is applied after any increases or reductions have been worked out, and the tariff's own note limits the base it applies to: net freight charges means line haul charges, accessorial charges excluded.
What surprises people is that one carrier publishes several of these schedules side by side. R+L prints items 563, 563-50 and 563-75 in the same rules tariff, and the latter two carry the heading that they apply only when a pricing agreement makes specific reference to them.
| Tariff item | When it applies | LTL percentage at the lowest band |
|---|---|---|
| 563 | The default, applying to rates published in or governed by the tariff | 16.2% |
| 563-50 | Only when a contract or pricing agreement names this item | 10.2% |
| 563-75 | Only when a contract or pricing agreement names this item | 8.2% |
Eight percentage points separate the top and bottom of that list before a single detail about the freight has changed. Both carriers also draw the LTL boundary at the same place for fuel purposes: R+L defines LTL as a shipment weighing between 1 and 19,999 pounds, and Central Transport's tariff reads that an LTL shipment is any shipment rated as 19,999 pounds or less. Above that, a different schedule takes over. Parcel carriers run their own weekly percentages on a different basis, and those are collected on our fuel surcharge page.
What a person needs to give you a real number
Freight pricing is a conversation with a short list of required inputs. Bring all of them and a quote takes minutes; leave one out and you get a placeholder that changes after the terminal weighs the load.
- Origin and destination ZIP codes, not city names, because the rate basis is built from postal points.
- What the commodity actually is, in the words you would use on a bill of lading.
- The number of handling units, and whether they are palletized, crated or loose.
- Length, width and height of each unit as wrapped, measured to the widest point rather than to the pallet deck.
- Gross weight including the pallet and the wrap, not the net weight of the goods.
- Whether either end is a residence, a site with no dock, or a place with restricted access hours.
- Whether an appointment or a call before delivery is genuinely needed, since both carry their own charges.
- The date the freight is ready and the hours a driver can be on site.
Density is worth working out before you send that list, because it is the input most likely to be wrong. Run the wrapped unit through the density calculator, then the class calculator, and you will know which column of the grid you are arguing about.
One check before any of this. Loads under a few hundred pounds in a single carton are often cheaper as parcels than as freight, and that comparison takes seconds: put the box into the SMKlog calculator and the price depends on the box, the weight and the lane, with the number returned already final. If the calculator declines the load, it is telling you the shipment has crossed into freight territory. Where the crossover sits is measured on our LTL against parcel page.
Where these rules come from
- Central Transport, Rules Tariff CT100-CB — item 595, alternate application of rates and weights, and the LTL definition used for fuel. Effective March 9, 2026, read 2026-07-29.
- R+L Carriers, Rules Tariff — items 160, 508, 563, 563-50 and 563-75, the canceled bumping clause at item 171, and the class rate grid published for Washington harbor points. Updated 07/09/2026, read 2026-07-29.
- XPO Logistics Freight, tariff CNWY 350-N — the abbreviation list defining L5C, M, Cwt. and MC. Effective March 20, 2026, read 2026-07-29.
Tariffs are refiled on no public schedule and no two carriers file the same rules, so the items above belong to those three on the date shown. The document that governs your shipment is the tariff of the carrier that hauls it, in the revision live on the day it moves. SMKlog is not affiliated with any of the three carriers named here and sells none of their LTL services.
Common questions
Why will no calculator give me one LTL number?
Because the base rate tariff, the reduction against it, the commodity grouping and the fuel item all sit in a pricing agreement rather than in the public tariff. A tool with none of those can only show a range and hope your load lands in the middle of it.
Can a heavier shipment really cost less?
Yes, and one carrier writes the obligation down. Central Transport rules tariff CT100-CB, item 595, says the charge for an LTL shipment shall in no case be greater than the charge for a greater quantity of the same freight at the rate and weight applying to that greater quantity.
What is a weight break?
A row on the rate table. Each row carries its own price per hundred pounds, and each row down the table is cheaper per hundred pounds than the one above it, which is what makes the step between two rows worth arithmetic.
Is the fuel percentage the same for every shipper?
No. R+L Carriers publishes three LTL fuel schedules in one rules tariff, two of which apply only when a pricing agreement names them. At the lowest diesel band the three read 16.2, 10.2 and 8.2 percent, so the same index week can produce very different fuel lines.
Does the fuel percentage apply to the accessorial charges too?
Not on the tariff read here. R+L defines net freight charges for its fuel items as line haul charges and states that accessorial charges are not included, so a liftgate or a residential delivery is added after the percentage rather than inside it.
Can SMKlog sell me an LTL label online?
No. We sell United States domestic parcel labels through the calculator and route pallets and LTL loads to freight review, where a person prices the lane against real carrier pricing.