One Pallet Position: Why Empty Totes Should Never Ship LTL

A customer rang — in writing, obviously — to ask why shipping one tote to Denver cost more than the tote. It is a good question with a dull answer, and the answer is worth about half the delivered price of every order we send.

Two numbers compete inside a trailer

A 53-foot dry van has 26 pallet positions on the floor and a legal payload of roughly 43,500 lb once tractor and trailer weight come off the 80,000 lb gross limit. Every load is limited by one of those two numbers, and which one binds determines everything about what it costs.

Empties are cube-bound

Forty-eight double-stacked empty 275 gallon totes weigh about 6,000 lb. You have filled the trailer and you are carrying one seventh of the weight you are allowed. There is nothing to be done about it — the object is mostly air by design.

LTL pricing is driven by dimensions and freight class, so it charges you for the space. An empty IBC occupies a full 48 × 40 inch pallet position and weighs 125 lb, which makes it close to the worst possible LTL freight: maximum space, minimum billable weight, no truckload discount.

Filled totes are weight-bound

Eighteen water-filled 275 gallon totes reach 43,500 lb using 18 of 26 positions. Eight pallet positions ride empty. With a heavier product it is worse: corn syrup at specific gravity 1.38 gives you thirteen units and thirteen wasted positions.

The per-unit curve

That is a thirteen-fold spread on the same object travelling the same distance. No amount of negotiating the tote price competes with moving along that curve.

What it does to a delivered price

Technical-grade 275s at $120 each, 500 miles:

• 4 units: $480 goods plus about $430 freight. $228 delivered each — freight is 47% of the bill.
• 10 units: $1,200 plus about $725. $193 each.
• 24 units: $2,880 plus about $936. $159 each.
• 48 units: $5,760 plus about $1,248. $146 each.

A 56% swing in delivered unit price, entirely from order size. If you were going to buy twenty-four totes across a year anyway, buying them in one movement saves roughly $1,650 and costs you some yard space.

The mode nobody asks for by name

Between about ten and thirty units, volume LTL or partial truckload is usually the right answer and is frequently not what gets quoted, because a standard LTL rate is the default path of least resistance. Ask for it specifically. On a sixteen-unit order it is routinely a third cheaper than standard LTL.

Accessorials, which are where quotes go wrong

Three of those apply to a very large share of our deliveries, because a lot of our customers are farms, job sites and small operations without a dock. The single most useful thing you can tell us at enquiry is whether you have a dock, a forklift, both or neither. It is the difference between a quote and an invoice you did not expect.

And the cheapest freight there is

Backhaul. Our trucks go out with reconditioned units and would otherwise come back empty, so collecting somebody's empties on the return leg costs us loading time and little else. That is why buyback pickups of twenty or more units within about 400 miles normally ship free — not generosity, just a routing accident we are happy to pass on.