How Truckload & LTL Shipping Can Grow Your Small Business

Trucks are how businesses move freight to where they need it. While over-the-road freight transport isn’t the only option, it’s the most flexible, affordable, and feasible for small businesses. Whether you’re receiving supplies, making substantial deliveries, or transporting goods across the country for a trade show, truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping is the versatile shipping solution.

Affordable Prices for Small Businesses

Truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping are some of the most affordable freight transport options for small and medium-sized businesses, especially when they’re growing. 

Filling a tractor-trailer is much cheaper than sending large loads with the standard package delivery companies, as those companies are designed to move packages rather than pallets. When many goods are going to the same location, a truck will almost certainly be less than the post office or its main competitors. There’s a reason the big companies ship via truck.

LTL shipping provides the same affordable prices, within a scalable range that small businesses can afford. If your business doesn’t have a complete truckload of goods to send, then it can use only a portion of the trailer. The rest of the space will be filled with other loads that are going to the same area. You’ll only pay for the trailer space you use, even if that’s just a small portion.

The combination of truckload and less-than-truckload is especially beneficial for small businesses that are growing. Send shipments via LTL shipping, until you have enough to ship a full trailer’s worth of goods. Should you continue growing and have 1.5 trailers (or some other portion), then you can use a combination of the two. You can also make adjustments between truckload and LTL as needed if your business is seasonal, or otherwise has a need for varying shipment sizes.

Access to Almost All Locations

Because truckload and less-than-truckload shipping are sent via roads, these methods can get goods anywhere that roads go. Of course, that’s just about everywhere that a small business would need to ship goods.

Some truckload freight transporters might only go to commercial locations since few businesses need to deliver a large amount of goods to personal residences. In the uncommon cases when a pallet or more is needed at a residential address, some freight transports are able to accommodate.

Being able to send goods almost anywhere is a major advantage over some other transport methods. Most notably, trucks afford access to many more locations than trains do. Trucks also don’t require offloading cargo from a railcar, only to move it again to a local address.

Tie-Up Less Capital

When shipments can be sized according to your business’s needs, you don’t have to keep as much on hand. Smaller orders can be placed, and smaller deliveries can be sent. You can have fewer things at your business facility, or in a third-party’s warehouse.

Reducing the amount of supplies and goods that you must keep in stock allows your business to tie up less capital. You don’t have to purchase as much at once, and you don’t have to lease the same amount of storage space. 

The cost savings can ease monthly cash flow challenges if your business struggles. If your business is rapidly growing, you can use the freed-up funds toward whatever is helping your business grow fastest.

Use Truckload & LTL Shipping for Your Business

Is your business growing? Do you find yourself needing larger shipping options than just packages? Use truckload and LTL shipping as you need to and grow your business. Contact us at AMR Group to discuss your business’s specific shipping needs, so we can help set up a customized solution that works well.