What is the difference between FTL and LTL, and when does a full truckload pay off?

Do you have a few pallets or half a lorry’s worth of goods ready and are wondering how to ship them? There are two options: FTL, where you have the lorry to yourself, and LTL, where you share it with other customers and only pay for the space your goods take up. We explain how the two options differ in practice, how the price is calculated and how to choose between them.

What the terms FTL and LTL mean

FTL stands for Full Truckload, also known as full-load transport. You book the whole vehicle and no other goods are loaded onto it, even if your goods don’t fill it completely.

LTL stands for Less than Truckload. Your shipment takes up only part of the vehicle and the remaining space is used by other customers sending goods in the same direction. The same type of transport is also referred to as groupage, part-load transport or consolidated freight.

How FTL and LTL differ in practice

With FTL, the goods are loaded at the sender’s premises and the vehicle takes them straight to the recipient, without loading or unloading other customers’ goods along the way. The loading date is set according to your schedule. Transit times are shorter because the goods do not go through consolidation at our warehouse.

Whether a full-load shipment is transshipped depends on several factors, such as:

• destination and route,
• regulations in transit countries,
• combined road-rail transport,
• physical customs inspection,
• unloading location.

For a specific shipment, it is worth checking this with the freight forwarder handling your transport.

An LTL shipment is handled more often during transport. It is collected by a vehicle on a pickup route and taken to our warehouse, where it is combined with other customers’ shipments bound for the same destination (known as shipment consolidation). In the destination country, we deliver it either to our partner’s warehouse or directly to the recipient. For this process to work, the goods must be palletised, securely packed and properly labelled.

How many pallets fit in a lorry and when a full vehicle pays off

A standard semi-trailer has a loading space 13.62 m long and 2.70 m high, carries up to 24 t and holds 33 Euro pallets. A tandem truck-and-trailer combination with a loading length of 15.39 m takes 38 Euro pallets and has a payload of 21.5 t. For smaller shipments of up to 10 pallets, we also offer BE-COMBI vehicles.

For part loads, space in the vehicle is calculated in loading metres. One loading metre (LDM) equals one metre of loading length across the full width of the vehicle, and a 120 × 80 cm Euro pallet takes up roughly 0.4 loading metres. A full semi-trailer therefore has about 13.6 loading metres.

There is no fixed threshold at which a full vehicle becomes worthwhile. With LTL you pay for each pallet, with FTL for the whole vehicle, so as the number of pallets grows, the two prices converge. The break-even point depends mainly on the cost of collecting the shipment and bringing it to the warehouse, and on the cost of a direct vehicle from the loading point to the destination.

Within Europe, the price depends on the specific carrier, seasonality and the current balance of supply and demand on the market. The unloading location also plays a role: a main route is priced differently from a remote mountain village. Some carriers charge the full truckload rate from as little as 11 loading metres. The shorter the route to the recipient, the sooner FTL pays off, sometimes from just 10 loading metres.

For transport to the Middle East and Central Asia, a direct vehicle can be cheaper from roughly 10 loading metres. However, a lot depends on where we collect the goods from:

The weight of the goods and whether the pallets can be stacked also play a role. From around 10 loading metres, it is therefore worth getting a quote for both options.

What makes up the price of FTL and LTL

The FTL price is the price for the whole vehicle on a specific route. It is based primarily on distance, which is why road freight rates are often quoted per kilometre. Tolls, fuel and loading and unloading time are added to this. Direction also plays a major role: if the carrier can easily find a return load for the vehicle in the destination area, it can charge less than for a destination from which the vehicle returns empty. For transport outside the EU, customs clearance and waiting times at borders are also factored in.

With LTL, you pay for the space your shipment takes up in the vehicle, and its weight also plays a role. The price is further affected by distance, stackability and surcharges, for example for ADR (dangerous) goods or for a vehicle with a tail lift.

When to choose FTL and when LTL

FTL makes sense when:

• the goods fill most of the semi-trailer or use most of its payload,
• they must arrive by a fixed date,
• you don’t want them transshipped along the way, for example because of their dimensions.

LTL is suitable for:

• a few pallets,
• regular smaller deliveries,
• customers who don’t need a whole vehicle at once.

At EGT Express, we arrange full truckloads as well as part loads

We transport part-load and full-container shipments, oversized cargo and dangerous goods across Europe, to the Middle East and to Central Asia. We combine part loads at our warehouses and dispatch them together to the destination countries. Send us the dimensions, weight and route of your shipment and our freight forwarder will calculate both transport options for you, free of charge and with no obligation, so you can see for yourself which one works out better for you.

FTL and LTL FAQs