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Freight5 min read

LTL Consolidation: Filling Trucks Without Losing Track of Loads

Part loads are where trucking margins are made — or lost. The difference is how well you plan the truck and how clearly you track each load on it.

Logxa Team

Logistics software insights

The LTL equation

A full truckload is simple: one shipper, one price, one POD. A part-load truck carries five, ten or twenty shippers’ goods. Each pays for its share, each expects its own delivery and paperwork — and the truck is only profitable if it leaves full.

Plan by three limits, not one

Trucks run out of capacity in different ways. Heavy goods hit the weight limit; light, bulky goods hit volume; palletised goods hit floor positions. A good plan watches weight, volume and pallets at the same time.

Check what can travel together

Some loads shouldn’t share a truck: chilled and frozen goods with different temperature ranges, for example. Catch it at planning time, not at the loading bay.

Sequence the stops

Multi-pickup and multi-drop trips need an order. Nearest-first is a sensible default; the planner should still be able to change it — a customer with a strict time window comes first.

Keep every load separate

  • Each load has its own stop, arrival time, receiver and POD photo.
  • Each shipper sees only their own load’s progress — never the other goods on the truck.
  • Each load is invoiced on its own rate: per kg, per CBM or per pallet.

Hubs multiply the benefit

Collection runs bring part loads into a hub; linehaul trucks move consolidated freight between hubs; delivery runs take it out. Re-measuring at the hub corrects weights and sizes before they cause problems on the next leg.

How Logxa handles it

Logxa’s road freight software has a load builder with live weight, volume and pallet bars, temperature compatibility checks and nearest-stop ordering, multi-drop trips with POD per load, and hubs with linehaul. See LTL freight software.

Put these ideas to work.

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