What are Freight Classes?

Different freight classes are designed to help you get common standardized freight pricing for your shipment when working with different carriers, warehouses, and brokers. Different freight classes (there are 18 of them) are based on weight, length, and height, density, ease of handling, value and liability from things like theft, damage, break-ability, and spoilage. For the most part, the lower the NMFC class number, the lower the freight charge.

Determining the correct freight classes

Part of our service at BlueGrace Logistics is to help you figure out your NMFC freight class, ensuring the specialized code is correct. This ensures that you get correct and consistent pricing for your freight. You should contact BlueGrace Logistics to determine an accurate freight class.

Role of freight class in LTL shipping

Determining your shipment’s freight class is a vital step to effectively managing LTL freight as it is a big factor in determining your freight hard costs, but also is a very important factor when it comes to dealing with any possible freight claims. Additionally, the most common problems we hear from customers at BlueGrace Logistics are often related to not understanding what freight class to choose. The shipper may save money on the freight shipment by picking a lower class, but then time is wasted when the carrier reclasses and the invoice doesn’t match the expected costs, making a traffic manager seem ineffective.

A little extra work, especially when it comes to freight class, can really help you save not only money but time, resources, and, most importantly, avoid delays in getting freight inbound or outbound to your customer.