You have a shipment on the dock and a decision to make. Too big for parcel, too small for a whole truck, maybe too long or too heavy for regular LTL. Pick the wrong mode and you either overpay for empty space or get hit with surcharges that wreck your budget. Pick the right one and everybody wins: you pay for what you use, the carrier fills space they had anyway, and your freight moves.
Here is how to figure out what you actually need, in plain English, with no upsell.
Start with two questions
Before anything else, answer these:
- Does your freight need an open deck? If it loads from the side or top, sits taller or wider than a van door, or won’t fit through a dock door, it is open-deck freight. Think machinery, structural steel, tanks, generators, lumber, or anything oversized and irregular. If it fits neatly on a pallet inside a van, it is dry-van freight.
- How much space does it take? Roughly how many pallets, how many linear feet of deck, and how many pounds? This is what decides van versus partial versus full.
Once you know deck-or-van and how big, the rest falls into place.
The modes, matched to the job
Parcel. Small, boxable, under about 150 pounds per piece. If it ships in a box a person can lift, this is your cheapest path. No need to overthink it.
Traditional LTL (dry van). Palletized freight, a few pallets, standard size, not fragile-to-handle. This works fine until your freight gets long, heavy, low-density, or numerous. Big LTL networks commonly reject or surcharge shipments of roughly six or more pallets or anything long and hard to handle. This is where budgets start to break.
Volume LTL (dry van, shared truckload). Bigger than a normal LTL shipment but smaller than a full truck, and still fits in a van. Several pallets, palletized, no open deck required. You get shared-truckload economics without paying for a whole trailer. If your freight is big but boxable, this is often the smart middle.
Partial flatbed (LTL open-deck). This is the one nobody tells you about. Open-deck freight that is too big or awkward for van LTL but too small to justify a full flatbed. The sweet spot is roughly under ten feet of deck space and under about 10,000 pounds. You share deck space with other partial loads and pay for the portion you use. The quote is locked in and not subject to the Density Minimum Charge or Linear Foot Charge that inflate flatbed-type bills after the fact.
Full flatbed or FTL. Your freight fills a trailer, or it is so oversized or specialized that it needs the whole deck to itself. When you outgrow partial, that is a good problem, and it is time to move up the menu to full flatbed, full van, reefer, or oversized open-deck through our parent company, Comet National Shipping.
A quick side-by-side
| Your freight | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Small, boxable | Parcel |
| A few standard pallets, van-friendly | Traditional LTL |
| Several pallets, big but van-friendly | Volume LTL |
| Open-deck, under ~10 ft and ~10,000 lbs | Partial flatbed |
| Fills a trailer, or oversized/specialty | Full flatbed / FTL (Comet National) |
The trap to watch for
Here is where shippers get burned. They have open-deck freight, a long steel beam or a low-density crate, and they push it through traditional LTL because that is the quote they got. Then the invoice comes back far higher than the quote, inflated by a Density Minimum Charge or a Linear Foot Charge the network applied after the fact. A number you thought was settled balloons on you.
Open-deck freight in an open-deck mode avoids that. When your load needs a deck, put it on a deck. If you want the full breakdown of how those charges work, our accessorial explainer walks through it: /blog/ltl-accessorial-charges-explained.
When you are not sure, ask
The honest answer is that some loads sit right on the line between two modes, and the right call depends on exact dimensions, weight, and the lane. You should not need a logistics department to figure that out for three pallets or one beam. That is our job. We will tell you if partial flatbed fits, if Volume LTL is the cheaper and smarter move, or if you have outgrown partial and belong on a full truck with Comet National. Recommending the right mode, even a cheaper one, is the whole point.
Have a load and no idea which box it fits in? Send us the dimensions and weight and we will point you to the right mode. Get a locked-in partial flatbed quote at /get-a-quote, or call (800) 831-5376.