We produce and ship textile. I usually use full truckload (FTL) but we can’t fill it up all the way and gotta pay for the empty space. Do you guys know of any good alternatives?
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Yep, LTL trucking is the way to go! Are the goods on pallets?
If you’re on the west coast Saia does LTL and I had a good experience with them. Not sure if they are the cheapest.
Unishippers or worldwide xpress. Basically brokers that you can get negotiated bids on multiple carriers, but you only have one vendor to pay.
Freightquote.com has been decent for us.
their sales model blows dick. If you dont ship for 90 days they reassign you a new sales rep and I have gotten some absolutely useless reps who F everything up, inputting shipping info incorrectly and then not correcting it when I call them out. Make a relationship with a local LTL company and meet your rep face to face, pricing might not always be rock bottom but they actually do their job correctly.
Basically if you only have a few shipments annually they are a dumpster fire to use because you can never get the same rep.
I’ve had the same rep with them for years and only use them a couple times a year.
I f$&king hate Unishippers. I shipped a pallet from SoCal to Denver for a show, got some boxes out and still went with the same weight and class although it might have been 60-70 lbs less when I shipped the same pallet to Chicago. They came back saying that the weight was 300 lbs more than original. How the f&$k that happened when I took the boxes out. I have not used them for 8 years or so now. Try broker company like Honest Freight (honestfreightusa.com) or Priority1. I compare rates between three brokers (I forgot the third one right now as business has been super slow and everything is saved in my work computer and I am in home right now). I have seen that Priority1 always comes a little bit cheaper. DM me if you need some help with LTL side. I can give you the person o dealt with. Honest Freight was acquired by TForce which used to be UPS Freight. I know so much since I have been dealing with LTL for close to 15 years.
Would the product be light enough to use a box truck? Or LTL could certainly be a good option. I would browse around and get quotes. You can can go straight to LTL carriers such as Saia, Estes, UPS Freight, etc for quotes. I would also recommend contacting some brokers for quotes as well. Oftentimes if you book your freight through a broker you can use the same big LTL carriers still but get a cheaper rate since the broker has enough volume to get discounts from them