Partial Truckload Shipping
Six to eighteen pallets, loaded once and unloaded once. No terminal network, no freight class, and no paying for 53 feet of trailer you do not need.
What is partial truckload shipping?
Partial truckload, or PTL, is freight that is too large for LTL and too small to justify a full trailer: roughly 6 to 18 pallets, or 5,000 to 25,000 pounds, with the top of that range assuming part of the load stacks. It shares a 53 foot trailer with one or two other shipments, but it never enters a terminal. It is loaded at your dock, driven, and unloaded at the consignee. The handling risk looks like a truckload while the price stays closer to LTL. There is no freight class and no NMFC number involved. You pay for the linear feet you occupy and the weight you add.
Freight that lands in the partial band
- Store fixtures, gondolas and display units for a multi location rollout
- Crated or skid mounted machinery, two to four units at a time
- Cabinetry, doors, windows and architectural millwork
- Granite, quartz and tile slabs on A frames
- Printed runs, paper rolls and skidded stock
- HVAC air handlers and rooftop package units
- Palletized packaging, corrugated and closures
- Trade show crates, staging and exhibit structures
- Replenishment loads of 10 to 18 pallets moving into a 3PL
Who ships partial truckload
- Fixture and display manufacturers releasing a store rollout in stages
- Equipment dealers moving two or three crated units that will not fill a trailer
- Building products distributors shipping cabinetry, countertops, doors and windows
- Commercial printers moving skidded runs and roll stock between plants
- Brands replenishing a fulfillment center with 10 to 15 pallets at a time
- Exhibit houses and event producers moving crates between show cities
The gap between six pallets and a full trailer
Six pallets is where LTL pricing starts to bend. Most LTL carriers apply volume rules once a shipment passes roughly 6 pallets, 12 linear feet or 10,000 pounds, and a separate cubic capacity rule catches light bulky freight that fills more than about 750 cubic feet at less than 6 pounds per cubic foot. Past either line the shipment drops out of the discounted class tariff and gets spot quoted, but it still moves the LTL way, through terminals. You lose the economics and keep the handling. At the other end, a full truckload buys all 53 feet whether you fill them or not.
Partial truckload is the freight that lives in between, roughly 6 to 18 pallets or 5,000 to 25,000 pounds, riding with one or two other shipments and paying for the feet it occupies.
Footprint decides more than pallet count here. A standard 48 by 40 pallet loaded straight puts its 40 inch side across the trailer, so two of them fill 80 of the roughly 98 inches of inside width and each row consumes the 48 inch dimension. That is 4 linear feet per row of two, which is why a 53 foot van floor loads 26 pallets in about 52 feet. Turn the pallets onto the 48 inch face and two go across in 96 inches while the row shrinks to 3 feet 4 inches, and that is the entire reason a carrier asks whether your pallets can be pinwheeled. Twelve pallets that cannot be stacked is 24 feet, close to half the trailer. Twelve that stack two high is 12 feet. Same count, same weight, very different price.
Two handling events instead of six
Count the number of times a forklift touches your freight. In LTL it is typically four to eight: loaded at your dock onto a city truck, unloaded at the origin terminal, restacked onto a linehaul trailer, broken apart again at a breakbulk hub, moved across the destination terminal, then loaded onto a delivery truck. Every one of those is a chance for a fork tine through a crate, a crushed corner, or somebody setting a heavier pallet on top of yours.
Partial truckload has two. Loaded at origin, unloaded at destination. The doors open in between only to load or drop the other freight sharing the trailer, and your pallets stay where they were strapped.
That is why partials carry the freight LTL punishes: store fixtures, display units, uncrated cabinetry, machinery bolted to skids, slabs on A frames, exhibit crates. None of it is fragile in the abstract. It is fragile to being restacked at a breakbulk dock at two in the morning by someone who has never seen it before.
Priced by feet and pounds, not by class
LTL prices off freight class. Your commodity gets an NMFC item number and a class between 50 and 500, driven mostly by density, and a dimensioner at the terminal checks whether the paperwork matched the pallet. Guess low and the reclassification comes back weeks later as an invoice adjustment. Partial truckload does not use class at all. The quote is linear feet plus weight plus lane, because what is being sold to you is deck space in one direction during one week.
That changes the failure mode. Nobody is going to reclass you. What can happen is a footprint miss. If you buy 14 feet and the freight measures 22 on the dock, the carrier just lost 8 saleable feet on that run, so the price changes before the doors close or the truck leaves without the load. Exact dimensions per piece, a yes or no on stacking, and whether a pallet can be pinwheeled: those three answers are the quote.
Weight carries its own ceiling. Gross combination weight is capped at 80,000 pounds, and a tractor with a 53 foot van weighs roughly 30,000 to 35,000 of that empty, leaving about 45,000 pounds of payload for everyone riding on the trailer. A 25,000 pound partial takes more than half the available weight while using a third of the floor, so it prices against the scale rather than the tape measure. Steel, tile and paper price by weight. Fixtures, foam and packaging price by feet.
When partial is the wrong buy
Use LTL when the shipment is under about 5,000 pounds and six pallets, stacks, classes low, and needs to reach a place a 53 foot trailer cannot serve. That last part matters most and it is the reason a good number of partial quotes should be turned down. LTL carriers run 28 foot pups, short city trucks and liftgates, and that entire network exists to deliver to a strip mall, a residential street or a site with no dock. A partial arrives on a full length van with a driver who expects a dock or a forklift at both ends. If either end lacks both, LTL is not merely cheaper, it is the only one of the two that can physically complete the delivery. Guaranteed day definite service on a published schedule is LTL territory too.
Use a full truckload when the trailer needs to be yours. Past roughly 20 pallets or 30 linear feet you are paying close enough to a truckload rate that exclusive use is the better deal. Anything that needs a seal unbroken from origin to destination, anything temperature controlled, anything with a hard delivery hour rather than a delivery window, buy the whole truck. A partial always carries somebody else's freight and somebody else's appointment, and it depends on the rest of that trailer selling in your direction. When the complementary freight falls through, the realistic outcomes are a rebuilt load plan or a pickup that slides a day, which a hard appointment cannot absorb.
Partial wins in the middle band and it wins hardest on long lanes. Past about 750 miles, LTL starts adding terminal days, often two to five of them, while a partial keeps rolling under hours of service, 11 hours of driving after 10 off, around 500 miles a day, pausing only for the other pickups and drops on the plan. On a 1,400 mile lane that arithmetic reads as a three day partial against a week of LTL, at a price much nearer LTL than truckload.
What a partial needs from your dock
A dock or a forklift at both ends, because the trailer is full height and the driver is not carrying a liftgate. Dimensions in inches for every piece, with stackability stated, since pallet count alone is not a quote.
Freight secured to its pallet rather than resting on it. A partial gets strapped to the wall or blocked against neighboring freight, then absorbs hundreds of miles of road input in a trailer that is opened and reloaded at other stops. Banding, stretch wrap that captures the pallet and not just the top layer, corner boards on anything with an exposed edge.
Appointment flexibility measured in hours. Your stop is sequenced with the others on that trailer, and each extra stop consumes the driver's 14 hour on duty window, not only drive time. A stop that misses its window by an hour can cost a full day of transit for every shipment on the truck.
For hazardous materials, compatibility with the rest of the load. Federal segregation rules decide which hazard classes may share a trailer, so a hazmat partial can only be placed on a truck whose existing freight is compatible. That shrinks the pool of usable trucks and is why hazmat partials need more lead time than dry freight of the same size.
Partials crossing into Mexico
A partial crossing the border shares more than deck space. It shares the paperwork queue. Every shipment on that trailer needs its own complete commercial invoice, its own tariff classification and its own instructions to the customs broker, and on the Mexican side the goods on board have to be covered by a carta porte. The truck crosses as one unit, so one incomplete document from one shipper holds the freight belonging to everyone else on that trailer. On a full truckload the only paperwork that can stop you is your own.
The border also bends the two handling event math, and that belongs in the quote rather than in a surprise. A cross border partial either interchanges as a complete trailer, in which case your pallets never move, or it is deconsolidated at a border yard so each shipment continues on its own Mexican side leg, which puts a forklift back on your freight one more time. Which of the two happens depends on the mix of destinations inside Mexico on that particular trailer, so it is a question to settle before booking, not at the bridge. The crossings, the customs brokers, the border yards and the Mexican side carriers are weekly work here, not a special project.
Partial truckload at a glance
Federal limits and standard trailer dimensions. Your quote depends on footprint, weight and lane.
| Typical size | 6 to 18 pallets |
|---|---|
| Typical weight | 5,000 to 25,000 lbs |
| Deck space used | 8 to 30 linear feet of a 53 ft trailer |
| Pallet math | Two 48x40 pallets per row, 4 linear feet per row, 26 on the floor of a 53 ft van |
| Handling events | Two: loaded once, unloaded once |
| Freight class | None. Priced on linear feet, weight and lane |
| Trailer types | 53 ft dry van, flatbed or step deck |
| Shipments per trailer | Usually 2 to 4, yours plus one or two others |
| Legal limits | 80,000 lbs gross, 13 ft 6 in tall, 8 ft 6 in wide |
| Payload available | About 45,000 lbs after tractor and trailer tare |
| Daily progress | About 500 miles per driving day, 11 hours driving after 10 off |
| Cross border note | Deconsolidation at a border yard adds one handling event |
| Coverage | All 50 states, plus cross border into Mexico |
| Poor fit for | Liftgate, residential or inside delivery, sealed exclusive use |
How a partial gets placed
Measure the footprint, not the pallet count
Dimensions per piece in inches, weight per piece, and a straight answer on whether the freight stacks and whether a pallet can be pinwheeled. That converts into linear feet, and linear feet is what the truck is selling.
Price the feet, the pounds and the lane
No NMFC lookup, no class, no density audit at a terminal. The quote reflects the deck space you take, the weight you add against the roughly 45,000 pounds of available payload, and whether the rest of that trailer can be sold in the same direction in the same week.
Build the load plan around your window
Your stop is sequenced with the other freight on the trailer. Dock hours, forklift availability and appointment ranges are confirmed at both ends before dispatch, because every added stop eats into the driver's 14 hour on duty window.
One load, one unload, one truck to track
The freight is strapped or blocked at origin and stays put until the consignee. Condition is documented at both ends on the bill of lading, and there is a single truck and a single specialist to call for position instead of a terminal scan history.
Which trailer your partial rides on
Most partials move in a 53 foot dry van, because most partial freight is palletized and needs a roof. Steel, pipe, crated machinery and anything loaded from the side by forklift or crane moves as a partial flatbed, priced the same way, by feet of deck instead of by class, on a deck about 5 feet off the ground. Anything over 8 feet 6 inches tall on an open deck goes to a step deck, whose main deck sits about 3 feet 6 inches up and buys back roughly a foot of legal height. Past about 10 feet tall or 40,000 pounds you are out of partial territory: that load belongs on a lowboy or an RGN, where you are buying the whole trailer regardless.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pallets is a partial truckload?
Roughly 6 to 18, or 5,000 to 25,000 pounds, and the top of that range assumes part of the load stacks. Linear feet is the number that decides. Two standard 48 by 40 pallets fill a 4 foot row across a 53 foot van, so 12 pallets that cannot stack is 24 feet and 12 that stack two high is 12 feet. Eighteen pallets that cannot stack is 36 feet, which is truckload territory, not partial. Under 6 pallets, LTL usually prices better.
Do I need a freight class or an NMFC number?
No. Partial truckload is quoted on linear feet, weight and lane. There is no class assignment, no NMFC lookup and no reclassification adjustment landing on an invoice three weeks later. What is needed instead is exact dimensions per piece and a yes or no on stacking.
Is a partial faster than LTL?
Past about 750 miles, usually by days. LTL adds dwell at the origin terminal, at a breakbulk hub and at the destination terminal. A partial is loaded once and driven, covering roughly 500 miles per driving day under hours of service rules, stopping only for the other freight on the plan. As a mode it typically runs a day or two behind a dedicated truckload and several days ahead of LTL, with the exact dates confirmed when the load plan is built.
Can I get a liftgate or a residential delivery on a partial?
Almost never, and this is the honest case for using LTL instead. A partial arrives on a 53 foot trailer and the driver expects a dock or a forklift at both ends. LTL carriers run short city trucks with liftgates built for addresses a full length trailer cannot reach. If either end has no dock and no forklift, price the shipment as LTL.
What happens if my freight takes more space than I quoted?
The price changes at the dock, or the truck leaves without it. The rest of that trailer was sold to somebody else on the same lane in the same week, so 8 unplanned feet is 8 feet of revenue gone. Measure each piece, count non stackable pallets at their full footprint, and say up front whether a pallet can be pinwheeled.
Can a partial cross into Mexico?
Yes, and it is the lane where document discipline matters most. Every shipment on that trailer needs its own complete commercial invoice and broker instructions, the goods have to be covered by a carta porte on the Mexican side, and the truck crosses as one unit, so one bad document delays everyone's freight. Ask up front whether the trailer interchanges whole or gets deconsolidated at a border yard, because the second case adds a handling event to your pallets.
Last reviewed: August 2026 · Reviewed by the Dobie Transport logistics team
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