LTL shipping explained: does your e-commerce freight qualify?

If you’re shipping palletised goods and not sure if your freight counts as less-than-truckload (LTL), full truckload (FTL) or parcel, you’re not alone. Understanding this is crucial to getting the right service and cost. The answer usually comes down to a handful of practical factors such as size, weight, the value of your shipment, and how quickly it needs to arrive. This guide walks through what LTL actually is, when it’s the right fit, and where your own freight falls within this.

The three methods exist to match cost and handling to the size of the shipment, so understanding where each one starts and ends is the first step to booking the right one.

LTL services should be used when your shipment only needs part of a trailer. It’s typically palletised freight that’s too large or heavy for parcel networks but doesn’t need a dedicated truck. Rather than filling an entire trailer, your pallets travel alongside shipments from other businesses, with cost and space shared accordingly.

FTL services should be used when a shipper has enough freight to fill a dedicated trailer, giving you the whole trailer to yourself. Amazon Freight FTL typically covers 24 to 30 pallets with a maximum weight of 20,000kg, though the right point to move from LTL to FTL depends on your regular volumes as much as any single shipment.

Parcel shipping covers small, individually boxed items, usually sent through courier networks rather than freight carriers. It’s built for single items or small multi-item orders, not palletised freight, so once your goods are grouped onto pallets, you’ve typically outgrown parcel.

As a general guide, parcel shipping tends to suit single boxed items. LTL suits palletised shipments below full trailer capacity, while FTL works well for shipments usually around 24 to 30 pallets and up to 20,000kg. Exact thresholds vary by carrier and lane, so treat these as a starting point rather than a fixed rule.

Certain patterns in e-commerce and retail freight tend to land squarely in LTL.

Products like flat-pack furniture, large homeware, or other lightweight but bulky goods often exceed parcel size or weight limits well before they’re heavy enough to need a full trailer. These are some of the clearest candidates for LTL.

Regular restocking of a warehouse is one of the most common uses of LTL since it’s rarely large enough to justify a dedicated FTL trailer but too large for parcel.

Around peak periods, ecommerce sellers frequently see short-term increases to palletised volume. These temporary upticks tend to suit LTL, rather than restructuring your regular shipping around a short-term spike.

Before booking, it helps to check your shipment against a few practical factors rather than assuming based on size alone.

Start with your shipment’s dimensions and pallet count. There’s no minimum pallet count for Amazon Freight’s LTL service so a single pallet qualifies. The only real ceiling is that your shipment shouldn’t need a full trailer. At that point, FTL would be the better option.

Check both the weight of individual pallets and the total shipment weight, since a shipment can qualify on pallet count but still be too heavy for LTL, or vice versa. If you’re unsure where your freight sits, a quote or lane-pricing analysis will confirm whether LTL is the right fit before you book.

Packaging issues are one of the most common reasons that a pallet gets refused at collection. Before a shipment is ready to move via LTL, teams should check that pallets are properly stacked, wrapped, and labelled to the required standard.

The type of destination affects whether LTL is a practical fit. With Amazon Freight, LTL is built for inbound shipments to Amazon Fulfilment Centres (FCs) in the UK and Germany, so it’s worth checking your destination against that before assuming LTL applies.

LTL isn’t always the right call , and a few signals tend to point the other way.

If your pallet counts or weights are consistently high or you’re close to filling a trailer on a regular basis, then it’s worth considering FTL services.

Low weight, small dimensions and single item orders tend to be better suited to parcel shipping. It’s likely to be the more efficient option instead of palletising a shipment that doesn’t need it.

Rather than defaulting to one method out of habit, it’s worth weighing up cost, transit time, and handling risk across the different services to ensure that you’re using the right method across your shipments as they shift and grow.

Amazon Freight offers both FTL and LTL services, so you’re not locked into one option as volumes change. You can book shipments through the online portal, get instant spot pricing or a contracted rate, and track your shipment from pickup to delivery.

To start booking LTL or FTL shipments, and take advantage of Amazon Freight’s vast freight network, create your free shipper account today to get started.

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