subject: What Is Ltl Shipping And When Would I Need It? [print this page] Shipping with trucking companies is different from shipping with parcel carries. Once you make that move up to the larger category of companies, you're going to have to learn what the new types of service are that you have to choose from. There are typically less options when your San Francisco courier is a trucking company than when they are a parcel carrier. The main option that you're going to have to choose between in most cases is going to be between FTL and LTL shipping.
FTL and LTL refer to how much of the available room in a given vehicle that you are shipping in you are going to be taking up with your cargo. When you're shipping FTL this means that you're shipping using the entire truck that you're shipping with. The opposition to this is shipping LTL, which means that you're only going to use a portion of the truck. FTL means full truck load, and LTL means less than truck load.
When you're shipping LTL, it means that you're going to be sharing that truck load with possibly several other clients of the courier company. By doing this, the courier shares the costs for much of the shipment among several clients, which helps to lower the costs for everyone involved. This is why LTL shipping is used by so many people, because it is one of the most cost effective shipping methods out there. The other reason that it is so popular is because it is appropriate for people shipping such a wide range of cargo types. While for loads under 100lbs a parcel carrier is most appropriate, and for those over 10,000 lbs a FTL truck is best, for everything in between, LTL offers the best possible option.
LTL is flexible, affordable, and you can usually find a truck going anywhere in a reasonably short amount of time. The only drawback that it has is that sometimes it can take longer to have deliveries completed when you're shipping them on an LTL basis than if you're shipping FTL. FTL trucks are only carrying your cargo, so every delivery is going to be one that benefits you. LTL shipments on the other hand have many deliveries to make on the behalf of many different clients. If yours happens to logically work best at the end of the delivery, all the time taken to deliver each shipment is going to delay your own somewhat.
by: Adam Trammel
welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net)
