By Tom Moore, CEO
Introduction: The Day I Got Three Overweight Tickets — and What It Taught Me
Executive Summary Truck load planning and optimization is the discipline of determining what goes on a truck, in what quantity, and in what configuration, so that capacity is maximized without violating legal, physical, or operational constraints.
Most companies believe their trucks are “always full.” In reality, trucks leave with wasted capacity in either cube or weight, or both. Why? It’s a confluence of factors:
- Tribal knowledge underestimates truck capabilities
- “One-size-fits-all” – or the lowest-common-denominator approach – i.e., working on the worst case
- Tools that cannot achieve even meet these “lowest common denominator” loads
- Compensation for dock loader capabilities to meet axle rules and real-world damage mitigation.
- Cuts that happen between load planning and loading
Early in my career, before I ever founded a software company, I ran a small private truck fleet. Nothing fancy. A handful of tractors, and a union crew that did their best every day to bring raw materials from a sister plant to my operation.
One day, three of our trucks left the sister facility. Same loaders. Same process. Same assumptions. By the end of the day, I had thousands of dollars in fines sitting on my desk.
That day cost us real money. Fines. Lost time. Missed schedules. Embarrassment.
But here’s the part that stuck with me: it was a simple mistake. Somebody had misplaced a decimal point in an item master entry, so while we thought the loads fit within our 50,000-pound capacity, they didn’t.
My loads weren’t pushing the limit. We thought we were being conservative.
And yet, three tickets in one day. That was my first hard lesson in truckload planning: get the data right and check it.
Generally, we wasted truck capacity. We were hauling bundles of tinplate that weighed 3-5,000 pounds. Often loads came to 46,000 pounds, and we couldn’t fill the rest (wasting about 10%). I was too dumb then to recognize that we had many options for what to mix and match on a load to get closer to the magic 50,000 pounds. In retrospect, we didn’t have the time (or ability) to be this smart.
Most load failures (overweights or underloads) don’t come from trying to do something extreme. They come from not really understanding the constraints and being able to optimize against them.
Decades later, while working with some of the largest shippers in the world, I still see the same pattern — just on an industrial scale.
- Trucks that look full but aren’t.
- Loads that are legal on paper but fail at the scale.
- Planners are doing their best with tools that were never designed for the complexity they face.
- And millions of dollars quietly leak out of the supply chain as a result.
This article is about truck load planning and optimization — not as a buzzword, but as it works (or fails) in the real world.
What Is Truck Load Planning and Optimization Software?
Truckload planning and optimization software, also called order optimization software, takes a set of items that need to be shipped and decides which products should go on which vehicles. It determines the optimal mix and placement of products across one or more trucks on a lane on a given day so each load is legal, executable on the dock, damage-free, and uses as much of the available capacity as possible.
That last point about a lane on a given day (or set of days) is critical. Capacity doesn’t exist in a single truck in isolation; it exists across a flow of trucks over time. One truck may hit its weight limit, while the next hits its cube limit. When those loads are planned together rather than independently, “heavy” and “light” products can be combined.
For example, by putting bricks and feathers together, 1 + 1 can equal 3.
Unlike calculators or spreadsheets, true load planning software evaluates thousands of combinations across weight, cube, axle, stacking, and operational constraints to identify the best loads — not just those that fit.
Truck load planning software is designed to determine what should go on a truck, in what quantity, and in what configuration, so that the load:
- Is legal by weight and axle
- Fits within physical space constraints
- Can actually be loaded by humans or automation
- Arrives damage-free (No crushed cases or tumbled down loads
- Uses as much of the truck’s capacity as possible
That last point matters more than most companies realize.
In practice, many organizations believe they are “planning full loads” when they are really just overcompensating for “just-in-case” violations.
There’s a big difference.
Planning vs. Guessing
If your process looks like this:
- Planner eyeballs weight and cube
- Applies a safety buffer or, more generally, that buffer is built into the load weight or cube target
- Creates the load “just to be safe”
You’re not planning. You’re guessing.
Guessing, a non-repeatable process, scales poorly.
How Truck Load Planning and Optimization Software Actually Works
Truck load planning software ingests item, equipment, and operational data, then uses optimization algorithms to build loads that maximize utilization while respecting real-world constraints, including state- or country-based axle-weight limits, gross vehicle weight limits, and damage-elimination requirements.
At a high level, modern truck load planning software takes in:
- Item dimensions and weights (including pallets and other dunnage)
- Equipment specifications (trailer type, axle limits)
- Urgency of need for each SKU
- Loading rules (stacking, support, fragility)
- Operational constraints (dock flow, labor, timing)
Then it uses advanced mathematics and evaluates thousands — sometimes millions — of possible combinations to find a load that maximizes utilization without violating constraints.
This is not a calculator problem. It’s an optimization problem, and that distinction matters.
The Calculator Trap: Why “Free Truck Loading Software” Falls Short
Clear Comparison A truck-loading calculator checks fit. Load-optimization software decides what should ship.
One of the most common questions I hear is:
“Isn’t there a free truck loading calculator that can do this?”
In addition to Excel, there are plenty of calculators. Most of them answer narrow questions:
- Does the load meet cube constraints
- Does it meet gross weight constraints
- Will these items fit inside the box?
What they don’t answer:
- Should these items be on this truck or the next one?
- What happens if I swap one pallet on truck 1 with another on truck 4 on the same lane on the same day?
- What does this do to axle weights?
- Can the loader actually build this load?
- Will pallets topple or cases crush while in transit
Free tools fail because they fall far short of even crude “optimization,” and real operations are dynamic. A static calculator can’t adapt.
Why Trucks Leave Partially Empty (And Why It’s Usually (Never?) Transportation’s Fault)
Most executives assume empty space is a transportation problem.
It isn’t. But they contribute by accepting carriers’ very conservative truckload weight-capacity numbers.
Empty space is almost always created upstream.
Common causes include:
- Supply plans that ignore transportation constraints. Really, there are limits to the number of trucks a core carrier can provide
- Order cutoffs that don’t align with loading reality
- Manual buffers added “just in case.”
- Fear of overweight fines or damage
In other words:
Trucks aren’t full because carriers failed. They’re partially empty because the plan was wrong.
Here is the new paradigm:
Instead of asking:
“How do we get carriers cheaper?”
The better question is:
“Why are we paying for capacity we already have but don’t use?”
Truck Load Planning Software vs. TMS: Clearing Up the Confusion
A Transportation Management System (TMS) answers questions like:
- Which carrier should move this load?
- What is the rate?
- When should it be tendered?
Truckload planning optimization answers a different question: What exactly should be on the trucks, and how should each truck be loaded?
Many companies assume their TMS “handles load planning.”
In reality, most TMS platforms accept whatever load definition they’re given.
If the load is wrong, the TMS will execute it perfectly — and you’ll still lose money.
The Hidden Cost of Playing It Safe
Back to my small fleet.
After those three overweight tickets, our response was predictable:
We checked all the items in our item master. And boy, were they conservative. We had not updated weights despite going to lighter materials. And yest, we had some misplaced decimals in a few more low-volume items.
Guess what we had endured?
- More loads – and in my case more union overtime and rental tractors
- Higher cost per unit
- More congestion at the loading dock
- ·Still occasional failures (But we didn’t always get caught)
Playing it safe didn’t reduce the risk.
It just changed the shape of the loss.
That pattern repeats at scale in large enterprises.
We also missed an important finding –Volatility Is Another Real Enemy
Most companies believe:
- Transportation costs are the problem
- Warehouses are the bottleneck
- Labor shortages cause instability
What we’ve learned working with global manufacturers is different:
Volatility — created by planners who don’t account for operational constraints — also drives cost.
When plan volumes spike:
- Carriers reject tenders –in my fleet, we ran more overtime and rented additional trucks
- Dock overtime (loading and unloading) explodes
- Where we used outside carriers, we had to go deep into the routing guide (Expensive territory)
- Core carriers got upset, saying, “You promised 1000 loads on this lane. That’s 4 per weekday—but you shipped 20 on a single day.”
Truckload planning and optimization software that operates in isolation cannot fix this.
Load planning has to be aligned with how demand is released over time.
Container Load Planning Software (Load diagramming)
Container Loading Planning Software (Load diagramming) Container load planning software, also called Load diagramming, optimizes product placement within a shipping container or trailer to maximize picking and loading productivity, efficiently utilize container space, prevent damage, and comply with weight and stability rules.
While load optimization software is designed to turn a set of things to be moved into orders that comprise one or more truckloads, Load planning software is designed to take a predetermined order and show how to best pick and load it.
A poorly loaded trailer can mean:
- Stock-outs
- OTIF (on-time, in-full) fines
- Damage
A poorly loaded ISO shipping container can mean:
- Damage across oceans
- Customs delays
- Missed vessels
- Massive rework costs
Container Loading Software vs. WMS
WMS will answer:
- How many pallets of “X” cube will be built
- How many full pallets are needed
Container loading (load diagramming) answers:
- What mix of products goes on each pallet in what sequence to maximize:
- Pallet stability
- Damage mitigation\Picker productivity
- Where should each picked pallet be staged to maximize loader productivity and make a good load?
- The composition of each picked pallet to best fit into the “Tetris puzzle” that’s the truck
- How to adapt when orders change?
If you pick and load at scale, this difference is existential.
How Companies Actually Maximize Warehouse Productivity
The companies that do this well share a few traits:
- They let load diagramming technology tell the warehouse management system what to pick and in what sequence
- They use the same software to tell the WMS to release pallet picks in the order they will be loaded
- They provide guidance to the worker on the WMS screens. (When you pick these cases, you should have a flat layer)
- They provide loaders with clear, executable diagrams, again on their WMS screens
This isn’t theory. It’s how the best operators avoid rework and fines and save:
- 20-40% of warehouse loader time
- 15-20% of picker effort
But wait, there is more!
When a large consumer products manufacturing company implemented picking and loading software, they were initially happy with the productivity savings:
- 20-40% of warehouse loader time
- 15-20% of picker effort
But then the lightbulb went on. Warehouse processes like picking and loading have traditionally been very unstructured and non-repeatable. I’ve always joked that if you give the same load to 10 different loaders, they’ll come back with 11 “best” loads. I put that to the test in a facility in Buffalo. I gave the same load to two different loaders, and they came up with three “best” solutions.
Once load diagramming software prescriptively drives picking and loading, you have a repeatable process, i.e., everybody does it the same way. With a repeatable process, you can eliminate “safety buffers.” And that’s what they did. In an environment where their price book gives the cheapest cost per case to companies that buy in “full” truckload quantities, they now have the capability to push the definition of a truckload.
Using the same software that they used to drive picking and loading, we tested scenarios on thousands of actual customer loads to validate how far they could push the truckload threshold. The added complexity was that they defined that threshold without the weight penalty of the physical wooden pallets. This statistical analysis gave us a 95% probability that any customer owner would, in fact, be able to ship both legally and damage-free. The savings were very large.
Why Manual Load Planning Stops Working
At scale, manual processes break. It’s too hard to do when there is a:
- Large SKU count
- High labor turnover
- A demanding customers in the mix
Spreadsheets and hand-drawn diagrams don’t fail loudly — They fail quietly.
And by the time finance notices (if they ever do), the losses are baked in.
Optimized Truck Load Planning : The Overlooked Lever to Sustainability:
Every partially empty truck is:
- Unused capacity
- Unnecessary emissions
- Avoidable cost
Improving load utilization by even 5% can eliminate thousands of truckloads annually. Sustainability teams often chase packaging changes. Load planning delivers faster wins that actually save money.
What Data Is Needed for Truck Load Optimization and Load diagramming?
You don’t need perfect data.
You need honest data:
Item dimensions and weights
Cases per pallet (if you ship on pallets)
Trailer dimensions and tare weight
Requirements – what needs to ship
Optimization helps reveal where the real gaps are.
How Eliminating Volatility Impacts Carrier Acceptance
Carriers prefer:
- Predictable volume
- Legal, damage-free loads
- Early tenders—more time to plan
When level load planning is optimized and stabilized:
- First-tender acceptance rises
- Preferred (core) carriers stay engaged
- Freight costs fall
This is leveraging capabilities most shippers never tap.
The Biggest Mistake Companies Make– Hubris
The biggest mistake companies make in load planning is believing they are already doing it well enough. “Our loads are always full.”
“We’re already doing this well enough” is expensive hubris1. That belief prevents learning and is expensive.
Smart companies win by questioning what they’ve normalized. In load optimization, they can save 5-10% on replenishment freight costs.
Making the Cost of Doing Nothing Visible
Most organizations don’t reject change. They reject uncertain change.
When KPI’s can show:
- How much capacity is wasted
- Where volatility is created
- What stabilizing flow unlocks
The conversation shifts.
Not:
“Should we change?”
But:
“Why didn’t we see this sooner?”
The Cost of Doing Nothing: A Simple Diagnostic
Most organizations don’t resist change — they resist uncertain change.
Here’s a quick self-check to be used internally:
- Do we know the true capacity of the carriers we use?
- Do trucks routinely leave with visible empty space or weight capacity or both?
- Are loaders or planners cutting loads “to be safe”?
- Do we never have overweights or cuts? (If you never have an overweight or cut, you probably have a huge safety margin.
- Do scale issues still happen despite conservative targets? (Loader isues)
- Are preferred carriers rejecting tenders?
- Does OTIF require expediting, overtime, or overrides?
If you answered yes to two or more, you are paying a recurring tax for infeasible load planning.
The cost isn’t just freight. It shows up as:
- Extra trucks
- Higher cost per unit
- Dock congestion
- Labor volatility
- Missed sustainability targets
Once that cost is visible, the decision usually changes.
Final Thought: From Tickets to Teachable Moments
Those three overweight tickets changed my career.
They taught me that:
- Good intentions don’t prevent bad outcomes
- Buffers don’t equal safety
- And real optimization respects reality, not averages
Truckload planning isn’t about squeezing harder.
It’s about thinking differently.
And that shift — more than any feature — is what actually saves money.
If you want to explore how this applies to your network, the goal is to surface what your current process is quietly costing you — and decide whether doing nothing is still acceptable.