How Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) Works Less Than Truckload motor freight shipping, or LTL, is an area of the trucking industry that is expanding rapidly, and is coming to be a standard part of the service supplied by any third-party logistics provider. It is the backbone of any freight consolidation system and is a common demand of small and medium businesses looking for logistics services – particularly if those businesses have complex or irregular supply chains which occasionally produce anomalous freight trucking requirements. A less-than-truckload freight shipment is usually one which weighs less than 10,000 lbs. Typically less-than-truckload logistics firms operate a three-stage process – prescribed collection routes are taken by low-level freight trucking resources such as drivers in large vans or even (depending on the size of the actual freight load) on motorcycles. The routes cover particular areas and include all shippers in that area who have arranged collection. Collected freight is then brought to a central breakbulk freight hub. Usually at this point the LTL freight trucking company performs an inventory of collected freight, weighing each individual collected freight item and verifying that it conforms to the precompiled paperwork. Once the inspection and freight verification process is complete the LTL loads are consolidated based on logistic requirements and destination, and cross-docked at the hub into longer-distance trucks, or transferred to storage trailers or available warehouse space until the required freight transportation is available. The frequency of motor freight transport transition between different breakbulk hubs is high, especially in cases where the same third-party logistics provider has a strong connection to both the origin hub and the destination and may be responsible for a large proportion of the motor freight trucking going in both directions on a regular basis. At the destination of an inter-hub freight delivery, the initial stage of the process happens in reverse; freight is deconsolidated into smaller motor freight transport vehicles such as smaller vans or even motorcycles and these use established routes to distribute the different freight items to their respective destinations. The consolidation and deconsolidation of freight at breakbulk hubs is the backbone of the long-distance motor trucking industry’s ability to service small and medium businesses, and the reason is obvious: consolidating shipments and incorporating new freight trucking custom into pre-existing ingoing and outgoing freight routes allows for huge economies of scale, thus putting long-distance motor freight trucking within the reach of customers on smaller logistics budgets. Less-than-truckload freight carriers also offer other services and advantages that are not available to customers of full-truckload carriers – they can often economically do collection and delivery at residential or non-commercial locations, and can often more accurately give notification of freight delivery times and other logistic factors.