LOGLogistics & transportationStop 4 of 10
Load building & consolidation
Filling each truck as fully as weight, volume and loading rules allow, and combining small shipments into fewer, fuller ones.
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A truck costs roughly the same to run whether it’s full or half empty, so empty space is wasted money. Two related ideas tackle it.
Load building asks: how do I fill this one vehicle? A truck has a weight limit, say 10 tonnes, and a volume limit, say 60 m³. Detergent is heavy and fills the weight first; tissue paper is bulky and fills the space first. Mixing them uses both limits well. Real load building also respects pallet sizes, what can be stacked on what, fragile and food-safe rules, and loading sequence: the last stop’s goods go in first so the first stop’s goods come off without unloading everything.
Consolidation asks: can several shipments share one vehicle? Three orders of 2, 3 and 4 pallets going the same way can travel together in one truck instead of three part loads. Consolidation can happen:
- across customers: multi-drop routes or a shared carrier network,
- across suppliers: one truck collects from several vendors (a milk run),
- across time: holding small orders a day or two to ship together.
The catch with consolidating over time is waiting. Holding an order for tomorrow’s full truck saves freight but delays delivery and adds a little stock. The right answer comes from weighing freight saved against delay and service promises, usually through fixed shipping days per region.
Words to use
- Vehicle utilization
- How full a vehicle is by weight, volume or pallet positions.
- Milk run
- One vehicle collecting from or delivering to several locations on a planned loop.
- Temporal consolidation
- Holding shipments briefly to combine them into fuller loads.
Filling both limits
A truck carries 10 tonnes on 20 pallet positions. A detergent pallet weighs 800 kg; a tissue pallet weighs 150 kg.
- Only detergent: the weight limit stops it at 12 pallets (9,600 kg), with 8 positions empty.
- Only tissue: 20 pallets fill every position but weigh just 3,000 kg, 30% of the weight limit.
- Mixed, 10 of each: 20 positions and 9,500 kg, both limits nearly full. One truck carries what would otherwise need almost two.
Good load building also respects stacking rules (no heavy pallets on fragile ones), product compatibility (food away from chemicals) and axle-load limits, which depend on where the weight sits, not just the total.
Loading for multiple stops
On a multi-drop route, goods for the last stop go in first, so each stop’s goods are at the doors when the truck arrives. Loading out of sequence means unloading and reloading at stops, which wastes time and damages goods.
Consolidating over time
Part loads cost ₹2,000 a pallet: ₹40,000 a week for 20 pallets. A full truck of 20 pallets costs ₹16,000 a trip.
- Ship daily as part loads: ₹40,000 a week, no waiting.
- Ship twice a week as full-ish trucks: ₹32,000, saving ₹8,000; orders wait 0.8 days on average.
- Ship once a week: ₹16,000, saving ₹24,000; orders wait 2 days on average.
The right choice depends on what customers were promised and what a day of waiting costs in stock and service. Fixed shipping days per region make the trade-off visible and predictable for customers.
Measure fill honestly
A truck can be full by one measure and nearly empty by another. Track weight, volume and pallet positions together, and treat a load as full when any one of them reaches its limit. Reporting only weight makes bulky products look badly loaded; reporting only volume hides heavy loads under the weight limit.
Packaging changes the answer
Product and carton design decide how well loads fill:
- Cartons sized to fit the pallet footprint exactly, without overhang or gaps.
- Pallet heights that use the truck’s internal height, often by double-stacking lighter pallets.
- Removing air from packaging (concentrated detergents, flat-packed furniture) puts more product in the same space.
Small changes in carton dimensions can add several cases per pallet and pallets per truck, cutting freight per unit for the life of the product.
Order rules that build full loads
- Minimum order quantities or delivery charges for small orders encourage customers to order in fuller units.
- Order multiples in full layers or pallets reduce mixed, partly filled pallets.
- Delivery schedules agreed with customers, such as Tuesdays and Fridays for a region, concentrate volume.
- Vendor-managed inventory lets the supplier decide quantities and fill trucks, within agreed stock limits at the customer.
Planning tools
Load-planning software solves a three-dimensional packing problem with real constraints (weights, stacking, orientation, sequence) and shows a loading plan to warehouse staff. In a TMS, load building is combined with routing and carrier choice, because the best load depends on which stops share a vehicle.
Interview kit
Practise it out loud
Answer each question yourself before opening the model answer.
Load building fills each vehicle within weight, volume and loading rules, ideally mixing heavy and bulky products and loading in stop sequence. Consolidation combines shipments across customers, suppliers or days into fewer, fuller loads. The trade-off is waiting time and service, so I’d set consolidation rules, such as fixed shipping days per region, that capture most of the freight saving without missing delivery windows.
What is the difference between load building and consolidation?
Load building fills a single vehicle as efficiently as possible. Consolidation decides which shipments should travel together, possibly across customers, suppliers or days, to create fuller loads in the first place.
When is holding an order for a fuller truck a bad idea?
When the delay breaks the customer’s delivery promise, when the product is perishable or urgently needed, or when the inventory and service cost of waiting outweighs the freight saving, for example with high-value or critical spare parts.
Connected stops
Where this idea feeds in, or gets its inputs from.
Sources and further reading
- Chopra, S. & Meindl, P. Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Planning, and Operation. Pearson. Chapter on transportation: aggregation and consolidation.
- Rushton, A., Croucher, P. & Baker, P. The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management. Kogan Page.
- Rushton, A., Croucher, P., & Baker, P. (2022). The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management (7th ed.). Kogan Page.