Apparel & Fashion Freight Requirements
Fashion freight is bought on space, format and a date. These are the inputs that set the price and the equipment.
Specifications
The Numbers and Requirements That Decide an Apparel Booking
Fashion freight is bought on space, format and a date. These are the inputs that set the price and the equipment.
| Requirement | The specification |
|---|---|
| Typical density, cartoned apparel | Roughly 4 to 8 lb per cubic foot, footwear lower. A full 53-foot van of fashion cartons often seals under 15,000 lb. |
| Freight classification | Driven by density first, so apparel rates in the higher classes. Understated carton dimensions get corrected on re-measure and re-billed. |
| Cubic capacity rule | Commonly applies above roughly 750 cubic feet when density falls under about 6 lb per cubic foot. Re-rates the bill upward. |
| Linear foot rule | Commonly applies at 12 or more linear feet of trailer. Eight standard pallets loaded two across is about 16 linear feet. |
| GOH equipment | Van rigged with steel bars seated in roof tracks, or roped. Capacity counted in pieces, and garment bulk sets the count. |
| GOH dock labor | Hand loaded and hand stripped, hours per trailer at each end, crew scheduled in advance at both origin and destination. |
| Empty hanger return | Hangers are plant assets. The return leg is booked with the outbound, not improvised after the season. |
| Must-arrive-by window | Set by the retailer's routing guide. Penalized for early as well as late, with a booked appointment slot inside the window. |
| Carton marking and ASN | GS1-128 label with the SSCC, placed exactly where the routing guide says, matched to an EDI 856 that lands before the trailer. |
| Trailer acceptance check | Dry deck, no daylight at seams or door seals, no residual odor, previous commodity confirmed before a carton goes in. |
| Securement | Load bars every few feet on floor-loaded cartons. A tall light stack walks long before the trailer is near its weight limit. |
| Heat and humidity exposure | Screen prints, heat-transfer vinyl and footwear adhesives block and stick in a closed trailer. Cotton and wool absorb ambient moisture. |
| Theft protocol | Sealed at origin with the seal number on the bill of lading and verified at delivery. No unattended drops across a weekend. |
| Cross-border origin file | USMCA yarn-forward rules of origin for apparel. Origin certification and fabric documentation travel with the shipment. |
The equipment
What Fashion Freight Rides On, and What It Should Never Ride On
The workhorse is a clean, dry 53-foot van, floor loaded or palletized, with load bars breaking the stack every few feet so a tall light wall of cartons cannot walk. Twenty-eight foot pups appear when the freight runs through an LTL network, and 48-foot equipment still shows up on older store-delivery pools. GOH is its own equipment class: a van rigged with bars seated in roof tracks, committed before dispatch and counted in garments rather than pallets. Store deliveries into malls and street-front doors with no dock need a straight truck with a liftgate, and often a driver willing to hand-carry cartons to a stockroom, which is a different service than a dock-to-dock truckload. What apparel almost never needs is a flatbed, and it rarely needs a reefer either, since garments neither freeze nor spoil. The exception is worth naming: goods that will sit through humid staging, or a receiver that specifies humidity control for leather and fine tailoring, can justify a temperature-managed box. For everything else the real requirement is a trailer that is watertight, odor free and sealed, not one that is refrigerated.
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Every carrier is vetted for operating authority and insurance, and we check the certificate before every dispatch, not once a year. USDOT 3411782 · MC 1100274