A skid is a platform that freight sits on so a forklift or pallet jack can pick up the whole stack in one motion. On a bill of lading, on the phone with a carrier, and in most rate quotes, it means the same thing as a pallet. FedEx Freight draws one real construction line between the two words, read from its own site on 2026-08-18, and it almost never changes how a shipment actually gets booked.
What a carrier bills on is the footprint and the weight, not which word you used to describe it.
FedEx Freight publishes a page comparing the two terms directly, read on 2026-08-18, and its own wording settles the construction question in one line: “A pallet has bottom deck boards, and a skid doesn't.” A deck board is one of the boards that forms the surface a load actually rests on. A pallet has that surface on the underside as well as the top; a skid, by FedEx Freight's own account, does not. That single line is the entire technical distinction the page draws, and it is not one a shipper needs to act on.
Old Dominion Freight Line's own glossary, also read 2026-08-18, does not draw that line at all. It defines a pallet as “a wooden or plastic platform on which cargo is stored for ease of loading or unloading” and a skid as “platform used to brace freight or load freight for shipping.” Neither definition mentions a deck board. Two national LTL carriers, two different levels of precision, for the same object sitting on the same dock.
| Term | FedEx Freight | Old Dominion |
|---|---|---|
| Pallet | Has bottom deck boards | A wooden or plastic platform on which cargo is stored for ease of loading or unloading |
| Skid | No bottom deck boards | Platform used to brace freight or load freight for shipping |
What that means for anybody actually booking a shipment: the construction distinction is real if you are standing in a warehouse holding one, and it disappears the moment you are on the phone with a carrier. Say “two pallets” or “two skids” and the dispatcher writes down the same thing either way.
FedEx Freight's packing guide, read 2026-08-18, gives 40 by 48 inches as the footprint of a standard wood pallet — the same size this site's own pallet size guide lists as 48 by 40, the more common order the figure is quoted in around a dock. Either way it is the same rectangle, and it is the number a carrier's rate engine is actually working from, not the word you used for it.
A standard footprint does not mean a standard weight limit or a standard stack height. Those vary by carrier and by lane, and are worked out in full, with figures pulled from FedEx Freight's and Estes' own published limits, on the pallet size guide linked above.
Plenty of people search this term while holding a single box, not a loaded platform. A skid or pallet only becomes part of the job once a shipment needs a forklift to move it — that is the point where it stops being a parcel and starts being freight. A box that a person can lift and that fits inside UPS or FedEx Ground's size limits never touches a skid; it prices straight through the calculator, no pallet involved.
Once a load is built on a skid, it is priced and routed differently: by handling units and freight class rather than by a single parcel rate, and by a person rather than an instant quote. Building and booking one skid covers that process end to end.
Carriers revise their own glossaries and guides without notice. Treat the wording above as what each carrier published on the date shown.
A platform that freight is loaded onto so a forklift or pallet jack can move the whole stack as one unit, built from wood, plastic or occasionally metal. Old Dominion's glossary, read 2026-08-18, defines it as a platform used to brace freight or load freight for shipping.
In practice, yes. FedEx Freight's own comparison page states the one real difference: a pallet has bottom deck boards and a skid does not, read 2026-08-18. That construction detail rarely survives the trip from the warehouse to the rate quote, and most carriers, tariffs and bills of lading use the two words for the same platform.
No. A carrier prices a shipment on its footprint, weight and how many handling units it counts as, not on whether you called the platform a skid or a pallet. Say either one and the person booking the truck knows exactly what you mean.
40 by 48 inches, per FedEx Freight's own packing guide, read 2026-08-18, the same footprint this site's pallet size guide lists as 48 by 40. Stacking height and per-carrier weight limits vary and are worked out there in full.
Only once a shipment is too big for parcel carriers. FedEx Ground takes single packages up to 150 lb, per fedex.com read 2026-08-18, and a box inside that ceiling prices in the parcel calculator with no pallet involved. A skid or pallet enters the picture when a load needs a forklift to move it, which is the point where this site routes a shipment to freight review instead of a parcel rate.