What 23,105 real pallet freight quotes show

• 16,107 LTL (less-than-truckload) quotes, generated between 29 April and 25 August 2026, from 201 origin ZIPs.
• 6,998 full-truckload quotes over the same window, from 364 origins. Median $5,751, average $5,271.
• 355 parcel quotes, all from a single day (29 April). Too thin to conclude anything from, included here only so the counts add up.
• Every quote runs to one saved delivery address with liftgate and residential delivery flags set, so these figures describe one buyer’s lanes. Quotes are computed per buyer account and per destination: another address gets another number.

Across the 16,107 LTL quotes the median is $1,047 and the average $1,316. The average sitting 26% above the median is the long right tail: heavy multi-pallet lanes and cross-country runs pull it up. For one pallet on an ordinary lane, the median is the better budgeting anchor; for anything heavier, expect to land above it.

Truckload pricing is a different market: a median of $5,751 across 6,998 quotes, for buyers moving 20-plus pallets at once. If you are pricing a single pallet, the truckload table is not your table.

The quote decomposes exactly, on 100% of the 23,105 rows. Knowing the stack matters more than knowing the average, because two of its layers are ones you control:

• The carrier’s line haul: the base transportation charge for the lane.
• The fuel surcharge, a percentage of line haul. It was nonzero on 13,821 of the 16,107 LTL quotes and averaged 30.1% of line haul.
• Fixed accessorials folded into the carrier’s cost.
• B-Stock’s markup, computed as a percentage of that base, not of the carrier’s cost.
• Flat destination adders where they apply: $30 for liftgate service, $30 for residential delivery.

The most common markup is 7.0% of the base, covering 14,378 of the 23,105 quotes (62%). But the observed rates run from 0% to 13%, and the rate follows the lane, the seller’s contract and the account, not any published schedule:

Shares of the 23,105 LTL and truckload quotes, 29 April to 25 August 2026.

A separate regime sits beside this one: some lots carry fixed-price shipping, a flat seller-negotiated rate with no fuel surcharge at all. When a listing says fixed price, the number on the listing is the number, and none of the above applies.

Fitting line haul against distance per freight class explains at most 28% of the price variance (R-squared 0.06 to 0.28 by class). The same origin ZIP and the same freight class still vary by plus or minus 32%. The missing input is the shipment’s weight, which the marketplace never exposes before the quote.

So any tool that hands you an exact freight price from two ZIP codes is guessing. The honest ceiling for an estimator is a range, and the honest move before bidding is a real quote: the shipping-costs guide walks the four-step method, and the free pallet calculator folds a real quote into your landed cost per unit.

Where a platform quotes freight on the listing or by request, that figure is the one to budget from; where shipping is buyer-arranged, the quote is yours to get, with the lot’s real specs. Either way, freight belongs inside your maximum-bid arithmetic, not after it: decide the landed cost per unit you can accept, subtract freight and the buyer premium, and bid what remains.

The live lots this math applies to are on the sample feed, no account needed.