Load Building

Load building is where load planning meets execution. It's the specific act of taking a set of orders and assembling them into a shipment – determining how many pallets, what the total weight is, which trailer type is needed, and how the freight physically fits. While load planning is the strategic "what ships with what," load building is the tactical "here's exactly what's on the truck."

In practice, load building requires accurate product data: case dimensions, cases per pallet layer, layers per pallet, pallet weight, and whether products can be stacked or must remain floor-loaded. Without this data, planners estimate – and estimates lead to re-class fees on LTL shipments, overweight fines, refused deliveries, and wasted trailer space. For shippers moving temperature-controlled or fragile goods, the margin for error is even thinner.

The load building step also generates key downstream documents. Once a load is built, the system or planner produces a bill of lading with accurate piece counts, weights, and NMFC codes. Errors introduced during load building cascade through the entire shipment lifecycle – from carrier pricing to invoice reconciliation to claims.

Teams that still build loads manually in spreadsheets typically spend 30–60 minutes per shipment on data entry and calculations. Automating this step – by connecting load building directly to the item master – eliminates guesswork and compresses the process to seconds.