What does LTL mean?

ya ltl is less than truckload. you get paid more because you have to do more work, i do ltl and we have up to 30 stops in a single trailer, driving in a certain area delivering 2 or 20 pieces and then to the next place, it pays more because it is driver unload and you are doing more work, more backing more trip planning more city driving and more unloading.

 

ltl is basically local trucking. LTL companies use either small tractor trailer combos or large commercial straight trucks and service a regional area (eg the SF bay area). ltl jobs are very labor intensive and require drivers to unload all of their own frieight. LTL run teams and solo and are almost always shift work, where you go home ever night.

 

Anything that doesn't fill up the whole truck and is usually to heavy or bulky for UPS to haul. Usually Bills of 8 pallets or Less all the way down to a pail of paint.

Sales man in the LTL industry are very happy when they can get freight that rides for free. Basically it is good billable freight that is light or nice and square that can be stacked. So now you have 10 bills of freight on the floor and 10 bills stacked on top riding for free.$$$$

But stackable or not ltl companys cube out every load.

 

Loosen to Left

 

LTL kind of sucks though because - at least in the case of the company I drive for - you make an hourly wage as opposed to pay per mile or how much you haul. You won't get rich doing LTL but a good OTR O/O can make a killing. I'd also suggest doing otr as opposed to ltl unless you need ltl for another reason, like to be home every night or to be close to a home base.

 

Especially if you work for cheap carriers>try the major ltl players. they pay a living wage PLUS benefits and retirement.

 

Good luck getting on with the good ones though. Eight months of pavement pounding and I still only managed to find a bare bones operation. 13 bucks an hour ain't ####, and I'm contract too so if I leave early it'll cost me. I think I'm on a couple of waiting lists. One with YRC and one with Southwest Traders. The latter was two years at last check

 

Isn't less than truck load when a company has several terminals that they route freight through? They will do line haul between terminals and each terminal has local drivers. When line drivers get to the terminals the dock workers will sort the freight that's going local in that area or put it on another trailer to go to yet another terminal via line haul. That was my understanding of ltl.

 

Local drivers bring the frieght to a warehouse where they "cross dock" the frieght. That means they put the frieght into different trucks that then deliever to different cities. I am in Kansas City. Brown Transfer is a LTL carrier. Grainger will send them several skids of items that have been ordered for shipment to Nebraska or Colorado. The Grainger loads are added to loads from other shippers and are then sent to Omaha or Kearney, NE. Those are the line haul guys. From there they are broken down into smaller lots and placed on local trucks for delivery or in the case of Colorado loads they are placed on trailers for shipment on to Denver.

Line haul drivers make good money and get a lot of home time. Local LTL drivers should be making 18 plus an hour. I get 45 cents a mile and 680 miles a day. I sleep at home every night.