You’ve got freight on the dock and a decision to make. Ship it wrong and you either overpay for a whole trailer you don’t fill, or you hand it to a network that surcharges it after the fact. The good news is that picking the right mode is not complicated once you know what each one is actually built for. Here’s how the modes line up and how to match your load to the one that makes everybody win.
Start with three questions
Before you worry about carriers or quotes, answer these:
- Does your freight need an open deck, a dry van, or a temperature-controlled trailer? Tall, long, or awkward freight that loads from the side or top wants open deck. Palletized boxed goods want a van. Anything that has to stay cold or frozen wants a reefer.
- How much of a trailer does it fill? Under about ten feet of deck space and under roughly 10,000 pounds is partial territory. Anything that fills or nearly fills a trailer is full-truckload territory.
- How difficult is it to handle? Six or more pallets, long steel, a skid steer, a transformer: freight that big LTL networks reject or surcharge is exactly the freight that belongs on shared deck space.
That’s most of the decision right there. The rest is knowing what each mode does well.
Partial flatbed (LTL open-deck)
This is home base, and it’s the answer for open-deck freight that doesn’t fill a truck. Think a couple of pieces of equipment, three pallets of structural steel, a generator, or a load of building materials that’s too big for parcel and too small to justify a whole flatbed. You share the deck with other partial loads and pay for the portion you use.
The part that matters most: the quote is locked in. It is not exposed to the Density Minimum Charge or the Linear Foot Charge that wreck a flatbed shipper’s budget on traditional LTL. If your load is low-density or long, that’s the difference between a settled number and an invoice that balloons. If you want the full breakdown of those traps, see /blog/ltl-accessorial-charges-explained.
Volume LTL (dry-van shared truckload)
Sometimes you don’t need an open deck at all. If your freight is palletized, boxed, and bigger than a regular LTL shipment but smaller than a full truckload, Volume LTL is the dry-van cousin of partial flatbed. You get shared-truckload economics without the full-truck price, and your freight rides enclosed. If it fits in a van and doesn’t need to load from the side, this is often the cheaper, cleaner call. Recommending it when it fits you is the whole point; the right mode is the one that matches your freight.
Full flatbed and FTL
When your open-deck freight outgrows partial, either because it fills the deck, runs heavy, or you’d rather not share space on a time-sensitive project, you want a whole trailer. That’s a job for Comet National Shipping, the parent company, which handles full flatbed, full van, oversized and specialty open-deck, and full truckload. Same people, same standards, bigger equipment. When the load is that size, we hand you up the menu instead of forcing it onto shared space.
Reefer, partial and full
Temperature-controlled freight is its own world. If it has to stay cold or frozen, it rides a reefer, full or partial, and that runs through Comet National as well. Reefer is not an open-deck service, so don’t try to force it onto a flatbed to save a dollar. Match the mode to what the freight actually requires.
Quick reference
| Your freight | Mode |
|---|---|
| Open-deck, doesn’t fill a trailer | Partial flatbed (FlatbedLTL) |
| Palletized, van-friendly, between LTL and FTL | Volume LTL |
| Open-deck, fills a trailer or oversized | Full flatbed (Comet National) |
| Needs temperature control | Reefer (Comet National) |
| Fills a whole van | FTL (Comet National) |
When you’re not sure, ask
You shouldn’t need a logistics department to figure out which trailer your freight belongs on. That’s the work we do for you. Tell us what you’re shipping, how big it is, and where it’s going, and we’ll point you to the mode that fits, even when that’s a cheaper one or the sister brand.
Get a locked-in partial flatbed quote at /get-a-quote, send us the load that LTL won’t take, or call (800) 831-5376. We’ll tell you straight which mode wins.