Part Load and Full Load Haulage
Buy the space your freight needs or take the whole trailer. Either way the price is built on loading metres and weight, and the customs entry travels with the load.
Ways to Move a Load
Six pallets and forty pallets are not the same job. These are the shapes most of our haulage work takes, and what usually sits alongside them.
Part Loads
Anything from a couple of pallets to two thirds of a trailer, sharing the deck with other consignments.
Full Loads
The whole vehicle on one job, loaded once and unloaded once, with nothing else on board.
Palletised Freight
Standard and Euro pallets, banded and wrapped, moving on and off with a forklift or tail lift.
Groupage to Europe
Regular consolidated departures across the short straits into the Continent.
Customs with the Load
Export and import entries written against the same consignment we are carrying.
Transit Under T1
Movements crossing a customs territory without duty falling due on the way through.
Part Load or Full Load
The honest answer depends on three things: how much deck you take up, how tight the delivery date is, and how much handling the goods will tolerate.
When a Part Load Makes Sense
You are paying for a slice of a trailer rather than the whole thing, so a part load is usually the cheaper option up to somewhere around eight to ten loading metres. Past that point the saving narrows and a dedicated vehicle often wins on both price and certainty.
The trade is flexibility for control. Your pallets travel with other people's, the trailer follows a collection and delivery run, and the date is a window rather than a slot. For stock replenishment, spares and anything that is not sitting on a production line, that window is rarely a problem.
When to Take the Whole Trailer
A full load earns its money on volume, on fragility and on timing. If the freight fills most of the deck, the per pallet cost of a dedicated vehicle usually falls below groupage rates anyway, so you are getting the direct run for nothing.
It also removes handling. The load is put on once at collection and taken off once at delivery, with no depot transfers in between, which matters for anything awkward to strap, easy to damage or unhappy about being moved twice. Timed and booked-in deliveries are far easier to hold to on a dedicated vehicle.
How the Price Is Built
Haulage quotes look opaque from the outside. They are not. Three numbers do most of the work, and a short list of extras does the rest.
Loading Metres
A loading metre is one metre of trailer floor across its full width. A standard curtainsider gives roughly 13.6 of them, so a consignment occupying 3.4 metres of deck is taking about a quarter of the vehicle and gets charged broadly on that basis. It is the number that decides a part load price more than any other.
- Two standard UK pallets side by side take about 1.2 loading metres
- Goods that cannot be stacked or loaded over take the full footprint, even if they are only knee high
- Overhang, awkward shapes and non-standard pallets all buy more metres than the footprint suggests
Weight and Payload
Deck space is one constraint and axle weight is the other. A vehicle can run out of payload long before it runs out of floor, and dense freight such as tiles, drums, castings or liquids does exactly that. Where weight is the binding constraint, the price follows tonnes rather than metres.
What Moves the Price After That
Everything else is a surcharge with a reason behind it. Knowing which ones apply before you book is the difference between a quote and an invoice you argue about.
- Tail lift collection or delivery, and anywhere without a forklift or a loading dock
- Timed slots, booking-in portals and sites with restricted access hours
- ADR classification, temperature control and any load needing dedicated equipment
- Waiting time beyond the free period, and reloading a vehicle turned away on arrival
- Imbalanced lanes, where the return leg is harder to fill than the outbound
How We Get Your Load Moved
We control capacity through a network of partner carriers we have worked with over years, placing your freight with the operator whose equipment and lane actually fit the job, and we are adding our own vehicles to that mix. Either way the load stays ours to manage. We book it, we chase it and we answer for it, rather than passing it on and hoping.
The customs side is ours outright. The declarations, the transit movements and the safety and security filings are written by our own people, which is the part of a cross-border movement that most commonly stops a trailer. Booking the vehicle and writing the entry in the same conversation removes the handover where things get lost.
- Carriers are checked. Operator licence, insurance and CMR cover are held on file before a job is placed.
- You get told who is coming. Vehicle and driver details go to your loading point, not a generic booking reference.
- One job number. The haulage and the customs entry sit on the same record, so nothing is described twice.
- Prices are broken down. Linehaul, surcharges and customs fees are quoted separately rather than rolled into one figure.
- Problems come to us. A late collection or a refused delivery is our call to make, not something you learn about from your customer.
The Numbers Worth Knowing
Four figures that shape what a haulage job costs and how it gets handled.
Loading Metres Per Trailer
The deck on a standard curtainsider, and the denominator behind every part load price.
Of Our Work Is Customs
Which is why the entries travelling with your pallets are written in house rather than bought in.
Traffic Desk Cover
Loads move overnight and at weekends, so there is someone to call when one does not.
Google Reviews at 5.0
From shippers and forwarders who kept using us after the first job went through.
Part Load and Full Load FAQs
What actually counts as a part load?
Anything that does not need the whole vehicle. In practice that runs from one or two pallets up to around two thirds of the deck. Below roughly a pallet and a half, a pallet network or a parcel carrier will usually beat us on price, and we will say so rather than quote you something uncompetitive.
How do I work out my loading metres?
Take the footprint of each pallet, work out how they sit two abreast across a 2.4 metre wide deck, and add up the metres of floor that uses. Two standard UK pallets side by side come to about 1.2 metres. If the goods cannot be stacked or loaded over, that is the figure. Send us dimensions and weights and we will do the sum with you.
Is a part load always cheaper than a full load?
No, and it is worth checking. Once a consignment is past eight to ten loading metres, the price of buying that much shared space tends to converge with the cost of a dedicated vehicle. At that point the full load is usually the better buy because you also get a direct run and one handling operation instead of several. We quote both when a job is near the line.
How much slower is a part load?
A dedicated vehicle runs point to point, so a UK domestic movement is typically same day or next day and northern Europe is often next day from loading. A part load has to be collected onto a scheduled trailer and delivered off one, which commonly adds one to three days in the UK and more into Europe. We give you a delivery window rather than a promise we cannot keep.
Do you own the vehicles that carry my freight?
Most of the vehicles come from partner carriers we contract and manage, and we are adding our own to that mix. We check operator licence, insurance and CMR cover before placing any work, and the job stays ours from booking to proof of delivery. You deal with us throughout rather than being passed to whoever is driving.
Does the customs paperwork come with the haulage?
Yes, on cross-border work it is part of the same job. The export entry, the transit movement where one is needed, and the entry summary filing are all raised by our own team and linked to the vehicle before it reaches the port. If your goods are moving through Kent, the short straits clearance is handled by the same desk.
How do I get a price?
Send collection and delivery postcodes, the number and size of pallets, the gross weight, whether anything can be stacked, and the date you need it there. That is enough for a firm number. Use the quote form or call the traffic desk on +44 1233 516081, which is answered outside office hours as well.
Tell us the pallets and the postcodes
We will price it as a part load and as a full load, and tell you which one your consignment should actually be on.