LTL Freight Quote

LTL freight quote

If you need a freight quote, the best way to achieve low shipping costs and a high level of service is to engage a quality freight company for LTL shipping.

LTL freight shipping can be a great way to bridge that gap between standard shipping methods and renting a full truck. Read on to learn more about this shipping method and how it can save your company money.

Looking for LTL Freight Quotes? Click here

LTL freight quote
LTL freight quote

What is LTL Shipping?

Less-than-truckload freight shipping, also known as LTL freight shipping, is useful when a shipment doesn’t require the use of an entire trailer.

Instead of having to rent the entire trailer, a business owner can split the cost of the truck with other business owners who have small shipments to send. Think of this as ridesharing for shipments.

In general, LTL shipping is used for loads weighing between 150 and 15,000 pounds. The separate shipments are loaded onto pallets and labeled and organized in the truck so the driver can keep them separate.

Carriers who offer LTL shipping have their load optimization down to a science to deliver the best results for their customers.

How Does LTL Freight Work?

In a normal full-truckload shipment, a driver will only make two stops: the origin and the destination. But because an LTL truck is carrying loads from multiple vendors, it has to stop off at multiple delivery locations. The arrangement of the truck will be optimized based in part on which shipments get delivered first on the driver’s route.

The costs of LTL shipping can vary widely depending on the nature of your shipment.

Shipping companies may charge based on how much space your shipment takes up in the truck, as well as what sort of items you’re shipping. You’ll also likely pay different fees based on where you need your items picked up and dropped off.

LTL freight quote
Inexpensive LTL freight

Reduce Costs with a Freight Quote from a freight broker

One of the primary benefits of LTL shipping is that it can help business owners to reduce their shipping costs. Traditional shipping can be very expensive, and you may feel like you’re throwing away money when you rent an entire truck for a small shipment.

This can get especially expensive if your business model requires you to send smaller, more frequent shipments.

LTL shipping only requires that you rent the space you need in a truck, rather than the whole truck. This can save you enormous amounts on shipping costs and increase your profit margins.

For a small business looking for opportunities to grow, this can allow you to consider new areas of expansion that would otherwise be impossible.

Increase Security

When you send a shipment of any sort, you want to be sure that it’s going to be handled well when it arrives. Goods that show up broken or destroyed are just a cost liability for your company. LTL shipping can provide you better security for your goods so you can be sure they’ll show up in good condition.

When items are shipped in boxes, they’re likely to get thrown and jostled around inside a truck.

But because LTL shipping uses pallets, you don’t have to worry about this kind of damage. The pallet will be loaded onto the truck with a jack or forklift and then unloaded at your destination, with no throwing or jostling involved.

Get Additional Service Options when you Source a Freight Quote

Once you start getting into the logistics of shipping goods, you’ll discover that the transportation aspect is only the beginning of your shipping needs. There are other services you may also need during your shipment process. These can include inside pickup and delivery, liftgates, and other services that make it easier for you and your customers to handle shipments.

Traditional shipment providers usually do not offer these services, preferring to leave boxes at the door and move on. But because LTL providers work with palletized shipments, you should be able to get access to these services.

You may have to pay a little extra to get this additional care, or your provider may include it as part of your overall costs.

Use Tracking

Tracking is one of the most important modern innovations in the shipping industry. Now you don’t have to wait around and wonder when – or if – a shipment will arrive at its destination. You can keep up with it every step of the way and see if it stalls out at one location or gets dropped off a mountain in Timbuktu.

Some full truckload shippers don’t offer tracking information, since delivery will depend on their driver’s schedule. But many LTL shipping providers offer a full range of tracking services through the bill of lading number.

You may also be able to track your shipment by PO number, PRO number, pick-up date range, and shipment reference number.

Save the Environment

In a world that’s seeing more destructive natural disasters than ever, environmental preservation has become a hot-button issue. We understand that we all need to do our bit to reduce fossil fuel use and pollution. And unfortunately, if the shipping industry were a country, it would be the sixth-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

When you use LTL shipping, you help to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere. By sharing truck space with other business owners, you reduce the number of trucks running shipments on the road. This kind of efficiency can help to reduce your business’s carbon footprint and preserve our planet.

When to Choose LTL Shipping

Although LTL shipping is an amazing option, like anything else, it has its time and place. You should opt for LTL shipping when you need to move a smaller shipment that will meet the weight and space limits. This is also a good option for businesses that are looking for cost-effective ways to expand their shipping opportunities.

It’s also best to use LTL shipping when speed is not the most important factor. Because LTL shipping works with several different companies in one shipment, there will be more stops and perhaps a less direct route. This means that your shipment may take a little longer to get to its destination than it would on a full truckload shipment.

Looking for LTL Shipping Quotes? Click here

Factors That Determine Shipping Rates

There are a few different factors that will impact how much you pay for LTL shipping. Two of the biggest will be the size of your shipment and the distance you need to ship it.

Parcels that are larger and which are going longer distances are going to cost more to ship than smaller shipments that don’t have as far to go.

In some cases, you may want to use LTL shipping, but you need your shipment to move a little faster than standard LTL rates. You can expedite your shipment, but it’s going to increase your rate. And a shipment that requires special handling, such as one that contains fragile or perishable items, will be more expensive.

Overnight freight shipping company
Overnight freight shipping company

Preparing LTL Shipments

There are a few tips and tricks that will help you prepare your LTL shipments more effectively. First of all, when you’re measuring your shipment, you may be tempted to round down to save money. But your carrier will charge you adjustment fees if you don’t give them an accurate measurement, so always round up to the next inch.

Shop Related Products

Transportation Management with SAP S/4HANA: Standalone and Embedded SA…$89.95 (8)

The Definitive Guide to Transportation: Principles, Strategies, and Decisions for t…$85.95 (33)

You should always make sure you complete your bill of lading as accurately as possible when you’re preparing a shipment. This document will act as a receipt for your goods and making sure it’s as accurate as possible can help prevent problems with your shipment. Finally, when you palletize your goods, make sure to place heavier items on the bottom and affix a label to the side.

Pitfalls to Avoid

The first major LTL shipping pitfall to avoid is not palletizing your goods. Loading your shipment onto a pallet may seem like an unnecessary extra step, but it really is the best way to ensure everything arrives safe and unbroken. Many LTL carriers will also refuse to take your goods if they are not on a pallet.

You also need to remember that an estimated delivery date is not a guarantee in LTL shipping. There may be delays at any point along the route, and unless you pay extra for it, you will not get a delivery date guarantee.

Plan accordingly, and give your shipments a few extra days between when they’re estimated to arrive and when they’ll need them at the end location.

You should also always insure your LTL shipments or make sure your LTL carrier provides insurance. No matter how safely you package your shipment or how good the reputation of the carrier, accidents happen. You don’t want to get stuck holding the bill for an entire shipment because roads were icy or another driver was distracted.

Use a Transportation Management System

There are also a few best practices you can follow to ensure you get the most out of your LTL shipping services. For one thing, your company should set up and use a transportation management system. These systems look at your overall shipping needs and use smart software to help you optimize those shipments.

A transportation management system will examine every shipment you need to send out and analyze it for weight, size, and speed requirements. Then it will check nearby routes to find the most effective LTL for you to work with. You can also compare rates among different carriers to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

Work With Consolidators

While a transportation management system can help you optimize LTL shipments on your end, it can only do so much. You’ll need to work with a consolidator to help get your shipment on the best truck to meet your needs.

These warehouses bring in shipments from a variety of different companies and figure out the best way to get them all to their destinations.

Consolidators take on the daunting task of examining destination locations, timing requirements, space requirements, handling requirements, and other such factors for dozens of other companies. They then use this data to group shipments together into full truckloads. Working with a consolidator can help you ensure your shipments get the care and prioritization they need.

Provide Accurate Information

From your bill of lading to your shipment measurements, it’s incredibly important that you provide accurate information about your shipments. Both of the systems we just described only work if they have correct information about every shipment they handle. In some cases, a company underestimating the size of their shipment by just an inch or two can throw off an entire truckload plan and cause delays for all the shipments it was going to carry.

Make sure you measure your shipment carefully and report its size as accurately as possible.

Take careful notes about every single item that goes into a shipment and whether it requires any special handling. This way your LTL shipping provider and your consolidator can get your shipment where it needs to go with as few complications as possible.

Lumping Services in Los Angeles – floor loaded to LTL

When product arrives floor-loaded and needs to be palletized, companies use Lumping Services to palletize cases onto pallets. From there, pallets are put away or cross-docked into trailers for LTL shipment to wholesale and retail customers. LTL shipments are the next step in the voyage of manufactured goods from the point of manufacture, into a container, then using a lumping service onto a pallet, and finally onto LTL transport for delivery to a customer.

Discover the Benefits of LTL Freight Shipping

LTL freight shipping can be a great way to save money and make the shipping process more efficient. You can share space on a truck with other companies and get your goods to their destination with less expense.

Make sure you always document your shipment properly, palletize your goods, and make sure you get insurance to cover your shipment.

If you’d like to discover more resources to help you optimize your shipping, check out the rest of our site at Warehouse IQ. We are a place for hard hat-wearing experts in the industry to share their knowledge. Check out our calculators today to start making your next shipment more accurate and cost-effective.

||| Looking for LTL Shipping Quotes? Click here

Warehouse Labor Services

3 warehouse workers moving boxes - lumper service

If you are looking for warehouse labor services for your warehouse operation, Lean Inc., in partnership with CDS Comprehensive Distribution Services, Inc. provides the following services:

  • Lumpers
  • Warehouse Workers
  • Picker Packers
  • Material Handlers
  • Janitors
  • Forklift Operators
  • Freight unloaders
  • Labeling
  • Delivery Driver Assistants
  • Revenue sharing programs

Freight Unloaders – Lumping Service

boxes to be sorted and organized onto pallet by professional lumpers
Boxes to be sorted and organized onto pallets – lumping service

lumper is a subset of Warehouse Labor Services. Knick-named “lumper” the worker is often a third-party laborer who works unloading cargo goods from shipping containers. Because goods are often floor stacked to maximize cube, each box must be identified by SKU, sorted, and placed on a pallet. Lumpers are used primarily for food or grocery goods, but occasionally in other areas of trucking as well.

A lumper fee is charged to the carrier when a company uses third-party workers to help unload the container contents. Lumpers are often used at food warehousing companies and grocery distributors. These fees are often reimbursable to the driver by the shipper or the freight broker.

Lean Inc., through a partnership with CDS provides third-party freight unloading services. For freight unloading prices click here. Lumper pricing is based on the number of SKUs needed to be sorted and the number of cases per shipping container.

Warehouse Workers – General Warehouse Labor

Laborer pulling a pallet in a warehouse
CDS Laborer pulling a pallet in a warehouse

When you need general warehouse labor to pick product and assemble orders, CDS can help solve seasonal business cycles and project-based work. Our staff are screened, trained, and supervised to ensure quality, high productivity work performed safely.

Activities provided for the General Warehouse Labor worker may include:

  • Process and load orders
  • Prepare orders by processing requests and supply orders
  • Pull materials
  • Pack boxes
  • Place orders in the delivery area
  • Assist in the organizing of the warehouse, shipping and receiving areas
  • Loading and unloading of shipping containers
  • Assist in inventory control by collecting stock location orders
  • Preserve a safe and clean work environment by keeping shelves, pallet area, and workstations neat

On-Site Pallet Repair Service

repaired pallets statcked
On-site pallet repair service

On-site pallet repair service makes good sense when a company plans to reuse pallets over a long period of time, maintain them, and get the full life out of a pallet. The alternative is to constantly buy pallet repaired by others.

Pallets are durable, reusable warehouse essentials that deserve some care and attention. Lean Inc. in partnership with CDS provides on-site pallet repair service so that your company can focus on the important business at hand.

Also available is our pallet rack repair service. Instead of replacing pallet rack, we repair the damaged rack to a stronger and more durable condition than before the racking was damaged.

Delivery Assistant Labor Services

Man assisting truck driver to make a delivery and move heavy objects - Warehouse Labor Services
Delivery Driver Assistant

Sometimes, deliver drivers are called upon to move heavy or awkward shaped products. Lean Inc. provides delivery driver helpers to ride along side the delivery driver and assist with the delivery of heavy and bulky items.

We provide labor to help deliver packages from the delivery vehicle to your customer’s doorstep. Your company may need a delivery helper associate to be responsible for assisting with the delivery of merchandise to customer homes. Merchandise might include home appliances, mattresses, furniture, lawn & garden, and fitness equipment.

Delivery assistants work on a two-person team to help with the timely and safe delivery of goods by using team lifting and/or material handling equipment. CDS delivery assistants provide attention to detail so that the risk of damage nearly eliminated. Additionally, a delivery assistant will assist in properly loading and protecting product scheduled for delivery. You can count on CDS driver assistants to follow all prescribed safety procedures at all times to protect associates, customers, merchandise, and property.

Warehouse Sanitation Services

Man sweeping a warehouse - sanitation services is a subset of Warehouse Labor Services
Warehouse Sanitation Services

Lumping Rebate Program Available for 3rd Party Warehouse Labor Services

IMAGE OF FREIGHT CONTAINER ABOUT TO BE UNLOADED USING Warehouse Labor Services
Freight Unloading Rebate Program

When you partner with Lean Inc. and CDS, you can evolve partnership with your lumping service to more than just a freight unloading service to a revenue generating partner. Call us for details.

What are Lumper Service and Freight Unloading Services?

Why should you use a lumper service? Whether it is truck, container, and railcar unloading and re-configuration of palletized freight, businesses are looking for an efficient and cost-effective 3rd party freight unloading service. It is not easy to unload a container, and the speed you unload the container matters a lot.

Scroll Down for Freight Unloading Services Pricing

What a Lumper Service Does

If a company has a container or trucks to unload, often they will use a freight unloading service. The reason lies behind the cost of unloading trucks, the difficulty of the work, and the speed by which a container can be unloaded and palletized.

Companies engage a lumper service to take boxes that are stacked inside a 40-foot shipping container and then sort them in front of the container, and then put them on a pallet. Depending on the number of the SKUs being unloaded, and the complexity of the work, the price goes up or down.

lumping service for a 40 foot shipping container
lumping service for a 40 foot shipping container

How Much Does It Cost To Use a Lumping Service to Unload a Container?

For example, to unload a single 40-foot container, with two SKUs it would cost roughly $130 per floor-loaded container at the time this article was written. But if you increase the number of SKUs to over 70 SKUs, which is far more time-consuming and complex work, the price would increase by $150 per container to $280/ container.

Therefore, you can see that by adding complexity to the work of unloading a truck, the price of lumping services goes up. The other items that affect freight unloading costs include the weight of the load and the availability of powered material handling equipment like forklifts.

It Costs More to Unload a Truck of Heavy Cases

Lumper service - unloading a shipping container
Cases being unloaded from a shipping container – offloading trucks

Because unloading a container is hard physical work, it can be very time-consuming. If cases weigh more than 29 lbs, then there is a minimum charge to unload these heavy items of at least $200. Unloading heavy items means that the work is slower and sometimes it is required for the lumpers (freight unloaders) to work in teams to carry the cases and place them on a pallet.

Using powered industrial equipment, like an electric pallet jack, is also a must. If the lumpers (freight unloading associates) are required to move pallets using a hand pallet truck, then an additional surcharge of at least $30 per container is added.

Unloading a Container with Thousands of Small Cases

If you are bringing in trucks or floor loaded containers with many thousands of pieces, then the complexity of unloading the truck and then palletizing the load is much more complex. For a 1000 cases in a 40-foot container, the price as mentioned above is $130 at the time of this publication, but if you have over 8000 cases in the same shipping container, the cost triples.

Who Uses Freight Unloading Services?

Our current customers include the largest grocery companies, 3PLs, and distribution companies in the United States. Call us for a list of references for our lumper service.

warehouse worker moving a pallet stacked with groceries
grocery stores use lumping services and labor companies like Lean Inc.

Lumper Service near you – Location matters

Because truck loading and unloading relies on available manual labor, where your warehouse is located matters. If you are close by to other operations we have in the area, it is easy for us to send a crew over to unload any number of containers, but if you a located far from metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, then a certain regular and reliable volume is expected for the prices we offer. You can expect prices to increase as volume goes down, or the travel distance for our workers increases.

Lumper Service in Los Angeles

Our headquarters are in Los Angeles with the majority of our current operations in the Inland Empire or in downtown Los Angeles. That means we have capacity to take on new customers and service them by integrating new work volume into our current operations. If you are looking for freight unloading or warehouse labor outside of the Los Angeles area, we can assist depending on the size of the labor requirement and the proximity to our other operations in the mid-west and area east of the Los Angeles basin.

Prices for Lumper Service

Subject to change without notice, our prices for lumping services and freight unloading on the day this was published are as follows. INSTRUCTIONS: select the number of different types of products (SKUs) in the orange drop-down menu. Base on the number of items in the container, pricing is listed in descending order.

Freight unloading service pricing for the Los Angeles and Inland Empire area as of December 22, 2020. Subject to availability. Nationwide lumping services available upon request.

Interested in Lean Inc. providing loading and unloading of trucks and containers for your warehouse? Use the contact us form on the right-hand side and we will contact you shortly.

How to Prospect for New Business on LinkedIn

Watch this video for a step-by-step guide to building up your propinquity and contacts in your sales territory.

For help in building your connections for you and generating leads for you using LinkedIn, fill out our contact us form and will we send you further information.

Prefer to watch the tutorial on YouTube? Click here.

HOW TO PROSPECT FOR NEW BUSINESS ON LINKEDIN - VIDEO LINK
https://youtu.be/Qwj5SJNkxAY

Lean Lead Generation

Want to discuss how Lean Inc. can help you find more business effortlessly using LinkedIn?

Set a meeting to discuss what we do and how we do it.

Propinquity Calculator

If you are in business-to-business sales (B2B), then you likely have a LinkedIn account. That’s because, in the USA, there are currently 163 million LinkedIn users (as of 2/3/2020).

But how do you compare to your peers? What is your Propinquity score?

Use this calculator to calculate your score using the data directly in your LinkedIn account. Below we will provide a step-by-step explanation on how to source the data and calculate your propinquity score.

PROPINQUITY SCORE

Enter the data in the fields below. If you don’t know where to get the data, see below for a step-by-step guide.

PROPINQUITY CALCULATOR – CALCULATE HERE

Need Help Finding the Data? How-to Guide:

Total Connections on LinkedIn

The average CEO has 950 1st level connections on LinkedIn. How many 1st level connections do you have?

Find out how many connections you have by logging into LinkedIn and clicking “Home” on the top bar.

LINKEDIN TOP MENU - HOME

In the top lefthand corner, you will see your profile photo and the number of connections you have.

LINKEDIN HOME - NUMBER OF CONNECTIONS

The other place you can look is by clicking My Network on the top bar.

LINKEDIN NAVIGATION BAR - MY NETWORK
MANAGE MY NETWORK - LINKEDIN NAVIGATION - 8,593 CONNECTIONS CIRCLED

Enter the Total Connections on LinkedIn here

TOTAL NUMBER OF CONTACTS ON LINKEDIN

1st Level Connections to Key Decision-Makers in APR

What are 1st level connections? These are people who you have invited to connect, or they have invited you to connect, and are now able to see your posts, updates, contact details, and interests on LinkedIn.

To identify the first level connection to whom you are already connected, perform a search within LinkedIn. Define your sales territory by selecting a geographical location. Define your target industry by selecting the industry.

LINKEDIN PEOPLE SEARCH FILTERS

For a shortcut, click on the logo below:

linkedin 1st level connnections

Enter the data here

1ST LEVEL CONNECTIONS DATA - PROPINQUITY CALCULATOR

2nd Level Connections on LinkedIn

What are 2nd level connections? These are LinkedIn users who are connected to you 1st level connections, but are not yet connect to you.

Using the same filtering criteria, change your connections type from 1st to second (de-select 1st, and click 2nd). Or you can click here. Be sure to open the “All Filters” option and select location and industries.

LINKEDIN 2ND LEVEL CONNECTIONS

Enter the data here

2nd level connections on LinkedIn - add data

PROPINQUITY SCORE

The calculator will now show you your propinquity score on LinkedinIn. Bookmark this calculator and revisit your score on a monthly basis. Compare yourself to your colleagues and the scores you have achieved in the past.

YOUR PROPINQUITY SCORE ON LINKEDIN

Compared to the Average LinkedIn User

The Propinquity Calculator also calculates whether you number of connections is greater than the average user, or less than the average user.

By the way, 100% = average the average user’s number of connections. If you are above 100%, you are above average. If you are below 100%, then you have some room to grow.

Average number of LinkedIn connections score

Learn How to Prospect for New Business on LinkedIn Like a Pro

To learn how to prospect for new business, watch this video.

HOW TO PROSPECT FOR NEW BUSINESS ON LINKEDIN - VIDEO LINK

Interested in exploring Narrowcast Marketing? Want to learn more?

Lean Lead Generation

Set a time with us that works for you to review what we do, and how we do it, and see if there is a fit.