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The Loader's Guide to Truck Loading

Different teams use different phrases, but they’re all talking about the same thing: planning and executing efficient, compliant trailer loads. This guide covers best practices for pallet building, load building, weight distribution, and temperature requirements—no matter which term your operation prefers.

 

Making loads that please everyrone is hard

  • The Law wants you to keep it legal
  • Customers want their undamaged order easy to count and unload
  • Drivers want a balanced load that doesn't move around
  • Managers want to load it fast and undamaged

Meet the law before you meet the road. You need to comply with regulations, but these guys need to be satisfied as well: 

Truck Drivers

Managers

Customers

  • Keep axles below 34,000 lbs
  • Keep axles spaced far apart
  • ...and the load must be stable

The highway patrols wants the trucks to be legal

Truck Loading Must Be Legal
California Bridge Law

Loads to certain states need to be have unique trailer set-ups

E.g. California limits how far the axle groups can be apart, so you need to load differently

Here are some rules that work most of the time:

Loading a Trailer

Loading a trailer is like working a seesaw

We all understand a seesaw, and a trailer is like that.

To calculate the weight on the axles and king pin requires a lot of calculations. You can’t do them in your head!

So when loads get heavy (40,000 pounds and above) you ask for help

Help with truck loading

Customers want what they want, when they want it

“Get all the order on the truck, And
Make it easy to count”

In the right stop sequence and keeping orders together

If keeping orders together makes a load infeasible or creates other problems, then allow the orders to be mixed in the stop.

Truck Loading Orders and Stops
SKU mix
customer

“Try to keep product families together. And some of my sites have small dock doors– so make sure we can unload it”

SUPERVISOR

“If the customer has small doors, make sure that last pallets go on in the narrow direction.”

The boss wants high productivity and no damage

“Bring multiple pallets at the same time and don’t waste time thinking”

Easy to load: based on how the product is stored in the warehouse

Which is the preferred style?

To make things fit, this will work ok (if the trailer is wide enough and the product does not overhang the pallet

Make products easy to retrieve and touch in the trailer


(Same items on top of one another and same families in each grab)

Goal: Support picking up product in double-wide fork trucks.

Make products easy to retrieve

Make Orders Easy to Retrieve

When you do this, you need to make sure you obey the other rules, like don’t double stack

Things that might stack nicely in the warehouse get damaged bumping along the road

It may look fine when it leaves the dock

But, if it is not built right, the customer sees a very different load when it arrives

Put strong items on the bottom of stacks

Check to see if product is:

  • Kept apart from others
  • Always on the bottom or top
  • Strong enough to carry other pallets

Damage is also caused by pallet movement or falling

Try to brace forward, backwards and to the side so pallets cant move 

Small pallets should not be alone on the floor - make all stacks exceed some minimum height

Don't put short pallets on the floor:

Not Correctly Placed Pallets

This is the right way with a minimum height:

Pilled Pallets for Truck Loading

Special loading for intermodal / containers

Intermodal Freight Truck

When bracing, keep singles or unit loads with product severely under-hanging the pallet in non-critical position

Critical Points in Truck Loading
  • Turn pallets at critical points wide / wide so the airbag fits tighter. But you can’t do that when the customer has small docks
  • Try not to have singles in a load and definitely not consecutive singles

To minimize damage, minimize the height differential between adjacent pallets and number of consecutive singles

Height Difference in Truck Loading
  • No singles in the nose or tail

Minimize Side Movement

Minimize how often this occurs. Try to never have this in the
last spot in the trailer. Double stretch wrap and turn pallets
near such a stack.

Minimize Height Difference When Building Loads

Use dunnage where there are significant areas of un-braced pallets

  • Turn pallets wide at the middle and back of the trailer where you airbag
  • Airbag where there are significant changes in height
  • Make the stacks in the back tall

Use fillers when the product significantly under-hangs the pallet

Use cardboard fillers where there is more than 2” of pallet showing…and don’t use airbags when the gap is more than 10 inches.

Certain product needs special rules

You have to learn which products must:

  • Ride on top
  • Always be on the bottom
  • Not be turned wide-wide (they overhang the pallet too much)
  • Must be kept separate

You may need to save space for out-of-stock items (that may become available) at back of trailer

Certain product needs special rules

I know you can’t keep all the rules all the time. Here is what I think is most important:

  • Make the axles legal
  • Keep sports separate
  • Brace forward
  • Brace sideways, particularly on second level
  • Keep orders separate (if you can)
  • Turn last two pallets (if you can)
  • Meet desired customer loading pattern
  • Keep same items together
  • Brace backwards
  • Keep families together

What they tell you…but it’s not true

Remember, it is hard to load a truck well.


When loading a truck, there is a lot to remember and a lot of decisions to make.

Some companies even have sophisticated software
 from ProvisionAi to help make loading faster and allow getting more product on the trailer.