Pallet Shipping Charges – Oh No!

Let’s face it, pallet shipping charges are a significant expense that all buyers would prefer to reduce – or eliminate.

Rejoice! We’ve got helpful advice to help our customers reduce pallet shipping charges and stretch their operational budget dollars to their fullest.

Cutting Pallet Shipping Charges

To know how to get the best freight charge for your pallets, it is important to understand the factors and vairables that impact your total shipping charge calculations.

The main factors are:

• Pallet Location
• Pallet Specifications
• Pallet Order Quantity
• Shipping Service Level
• Delivery Location
• Truck Lane Opportunities

Read on to see how these shipping factors influence pallet freight costs.

Pallet Location

The shipping origin of your pallets is very important. The further away your pallets are located, the more you pay!

Pro Tip: We offer a location filter on our plastic pallets and containers that shows you where the pallets come from, allowing you to choose pallets close to your location – to reduce your shipping charges and save money!

Pallet Specifications

The smaller and lighter the pallet, the less shipping you pay. Furthermore, nestable pallets ship more compactly, allowing the shipper to pack more units into a stack.

Pro Tip: Reduce your shipping charges by Consider if Nestable Plastic Pallets will meet your needs; nestable pallet can reduce your freight charges!

Pallet Order Quantity

Generally speaking, the more pallets you order, the smaller your “per unit” shipping costs are going to be.

Here are some examples of how adjusting your plastic pallet order quantity can reduce your “per unit” shipping charges.

Pro Tip: Reduce your “per unit” shipping charges by increasing your quantity to find the sweet spot.

Extra Pro Tip: Reduce your pallet prices by order more pallets. For advice on how upping your order quantity can increase your plastic pallet freight savings and lower pallet prices – [go here ].

Shipping Service Level

In a hurry? It’ll cost you. Faster shipping services for your plastic pallets are more expensive.

Pro Tip: Monitor your inventory and place pallet orders before you run out. You’ll save at least 50% on shipping charges if you can afford to wait the standard 3-5 business day transit time (instead of using rush services).

Delivery Location

Your location, obviously, impacts pallet freight costs. If you’re far away from the plastic pallet shipping point, expect to pay more.

Residential Or Commercial?

Pallet freight charges are typically lower for delivering to commercial locations. Delivering Pallets to a residential area will add a $100 fee to freight charges.

Loading Dock

IF you don’t have a loading dock, you’ll need a liftgate service from the shipper (unless you can somehow unload it yourself. Liftgates add $50 to the shipping charges.

Pro Tip: Save the residential and liftgate delivery upcharge fees and ship the pallets to your buddy’s business. And buy your buddy a six pack of Beer to show your appreciation.

Truck Shipping Lane Opportunities

Here’s a great way to save a ton of money when shipping quantities of plastic pallets that are less than a full truckload.

Shipping Lanes

Quick Vocabulary Word: Shipping Lane – a regularly used shipping route used for deliveries. 

When a pallet shipment approaches 8-10 stacks (see our product pages for the numbers of pallets per stack), that can cover as much one third of a truck’s cargo space (a 40′ truck has about 30 40″ x 48″ skid spots). This situation may cause you to pay for the entire truck! Boo!

But why?

This happens because the trucker may not have any other deliveries to make on that particular shipping lane – causing cargo space to go unfilled!

What does unfilled space equal? Inefficiency and higher costs. Money!

A genius move, used by our pallet experts, is to try dividing the shipment into 2 trucks, allowing the excess space in the 2 trucks to be filled with payload for other deliveries in that truck lane, reducing the overall freight costs by as much as 50% in some cases.

Pallet Shipping Charge Calculator

The One Way Solutions website is unique, unlike any other in the plastic pallet market.

One Way Solutions offers Pallet Shipping Charge rating and quoting, both in our online Shopping Cart and during online Checkout.

Our advanced pallet shipping calculator calls out to hundreds of shipping partners, in realtime, to find you the most competitive shipping rate!

This unique service makes the decision process, that was once far more complicated, as easy as pie.

We know you’ll love it – please let us know what you think!

Use Your Own Shipper!

Our website allows you to remove shipping charges from your pallet order and indicate your own shipper.

Pro Tip: If you have an account with a shipping company, you may get a discount that will reduce your shipping charges.

Here’s how to use your shipper account on our website:

• Step 1. During checkout, indicate that you want Shipping Method “LTL Freight Collect $0.00”
• Step 2. Add you shipper name.
• Step 3. Add your shipper account number or ID

We hope that helps!

We hoped you enjoyed learning how plastic pallet shipping charges can be reduced.

We’d love to hear from you – please let us know what tricks have helped you save money in the comments below.

Need Help Selecting A Pallet?

Our Plastic Pallet Experts are happy to help you find the right plastic pallet and send you a quote that includes shipping costs. Please contact to find the perfect pallet at the best price.