LTL freight lives a rougher life than truckload freight. Your pallet may be loaded and unloaded several times, cross-docked at terminals, moved by different forklift operators, and stacked next to — or under — someone else’s freight. Every one of those touches is a chance for damage, and every gap in your packaging is a chance for a carrier to deny the claim.
The good news: the majority of preventable LTL damage traces back to a short list of packaging mistakes. Fix these, and both your damage rate and your claim-denial rate drop.
Step 1: Start with the right pallet
The pallet is your freight’s foundation, and a bad one undermines everything above it.
- Use standard 48″ x 40″ four-way pallets unless your freight genuinely requires another footprint. Standard sizes ride better next to other freight and fit terminal equipment.
- Inspect before you load. Cracked stringers, missing deck boards, and protruding nails cause tip-overs and puncture damage. A broken pallet is not “probably fine.”
- Match pallet strength to load weight. Lightweight recycled pallets under dense freight is a classic failure. When in doubt, use a heavier-duty pallet.
- Consider heat-treated (ISPM 15) pallets if there’s any chance the shipment continues internationally — common for freight moving through Miami to the Caribbean or Latin America.
Step 2: Stack for strength, not for convenience
How you place boxes determines whether the pallet behaves like one solid block or a pile of loose cartons.
- Column stacking beats interlocking for strength. Aligning boxes corner-over-corner preserves most of a carton’s compression strength. Interlocked (brick-style) stacking improves stability slightly but can sacrifice a meaningful share of stacking strength. For heavy or fragile contents, use columns and rely on wrap and corner boards for stability.
- No overhang. Ever. Cartons hanging past the pallet edge lose compression strength and become the first thing a forklift or neighboring pallet hits. Undersized is fine; overhang is not.
- Heavy on the bottom, light on top. Obvious, and still violated daily.
- Keep it level. A flat top layer distributes weight and prevents a pyramid that concentrates load on a few cartons. If your freight can’t be stacked on, say so explicitly (more below).
- Fill voids inside cartons. Half-empty boxes crush. Use dunnage so every carton bears load through its walls.
Step 3: Stretch wrap like you mean it
Stretch wrap isn’t decoration — it’s what unitizes the load.
- Anchor to the pallet. Start wrapping around the pallet base itself, tying the freight to the wood. Wrap that starts at the bottom carton lets the whole stack slide off the pallet.
- Multiple overlapping passes. Work bottom to top and back down, overlapping each pass by about half the film width. A single lazy spiral doesn’t restrain anything.
- Stretch the film. The restraint comes from tension. Machine wrap or a good hand-wrap technique with real tension outperforms loose film every time.
- Add corner boards before wrapping on any load with crushable edges. They spread strap and film tension, protect carton corners, and dramatically stiffen the column.
- Banding for heavy freight. Steel or poly strapping through the pallet adds restraint that film alone can’t provide for dense items like machinery parts, stone, or cased liquids.
Step 4: Label and document like a claims adjuster is watching
Because eventually, one will be.
- Label every pallet with shipper, consignee, PO/reference numbers, and piece count (“Pallet 1 of 3”). Put labels on two sides.
- Use handling markings that mean something: “Do Not Stack” cones or labels, “This Side Up,” “Fragile.” Terminals can’t respect instructions you didn’t give.
- Describe the freight accurately on the BOL — commodity, packaging type, dimensions, and weight. Accurate dims and weight also protect you from reclassification and reweigh fees, which sting almost as much as damage.
- Photograph everything at pickup. Wide shots of each wrapped pallet, close-ups of labels, and the freight on the truck if possible. Time-stamped photos of a clean, well-packed pallet are your single best weapon in a claim dispute.
- Note exceptions at delivery. Train consignees to inspect before signing and to write specific damage notations on the delivery receipt. “Subject to inspection” is weak; “carton crushed on pallet 2, punctured wrap” is evidence.
When a pallet isn’t enough: crating
Some freight shouldn’t ride LTL on a pallet at all. Consider custom crating when the item is:
- High-value relative to its size (electronics, instruments, artwork, machinery)
- Irregularly shaped, top-heavy, or impossible to stack safely
- Fragile in ways stretch wrap can’t fix (glass, stone tops, finished surfaces)
- Traveling far, transloading multiple times, or continuing overseas
A properly built crate converts “please handle carefully” into a structure that doesn’t need the plea. Go Freight’s packing and crating team builds custom wood crates and export packaging in Miami for exactly these cases — often for freight that already failed once on a pallet.
The carrier side of the equation
Packaging is your half of the bargain; handling is the carrier’s. Damage rates also depend on how many terminals your freight passes through and who touches it. Regional freight that stays on one truck with one crew sees far fewer touches than freight crossing three hub terminals. For South Florida shippers, Go Freight runs its own LTL fleet with 16 ft and 26 ft trucks and local drivers — fewer handoffs, and accountability that stays in one place. Freight can stage, consolidate, or cross-dock through our Miami warehouse when orders need to be combined before delivery.
Well-packed freight plus a carrier with skin in the game is how damage claims become rare instead of routine. Questions about a tricky shipment? Call (786) 445-0150 or request a quote.
Frequently asked questions
Is column stacking or interlocked stacking better for pallets?
Column stacking — aligning boxes directly corner-over-corner — preserves the most compression strength, because carton corners carry most of the load. Interlocked stacking adds a little lateral stability but reduces stacking strength. For heavy or fragile freight, column-stack and get stability from tight stretch wrap, corner boards, and banding instead.
How much overhang is acceptable on an LTL pallet?
None. Any carton extending past the pallet edge loses a significant share of its compression strength and is exposed to impacts from forklifts and adjacent freight. Overhang is also a common reason carriers deny damage claims, since it counts as improper packaging. Keep freight flush with or inside the pallet footprint.
What documentation helps win a freight damage claim?
Time-stamped photos of the packed pallets at pickup, an accurate bill of lading describing the freight and packaging, and specific damage notations written on the delivery receipt at the time of delivery. Concealed damage discovered after signing clean is much harder to recover, and reporting windows are short, so inspect before signing.