Types of Road Freight in South Africa

With the rise of companies like Takealot, Raru, and Hootsuite in South Africa, it is now easier than ever to get the stuff you want delivered to your door! What few people ever think about is HOW exactly their desired products arrive on time (most of the time). So, to give you a better understanding of how your packages get from point A to point B, we thought we’d take a look at a few different types of road freight in South Africa…

Intermodal Freight

Intermodal freighting is essentially the use of multiple modes of freight to transport goods from one point to another. These modes of freight include sea, rail, air and road. For example, a TV factory in China manufactures your new TV and packs it into a lorry. This lorry then road freights the TV to the harbour, where it is packed onto a ship and sea freighted to Cape Town. It is then packed onto a train that rail freights it to the warehouse where a delivery driver picks up your TV and delivers it via road freight.

Expedited Freight

While the above freighting covers many modes of freighting, the last four points will cover road freight. Expedited freight is the only method for transporting time-sensitive loads or packages across land. The load is packed into the vehicle, and it is driven directly to its end destination – with no stops in between! Got a pack of cookies that need to get to Grandma in a hurry? You can use expedited freight, but it’ll cost you more than regular freight.

LTL Freight

LTL freight stands for ‘less than truckload’ or ‘less than load’ freight and is probably the most utilised road freighting across the globe. Essentially, LTL freight specialises in transporting smaller items from various transportation hubs together. This means that packages often travel on a few trucks, and processed at a few transport hubs, before arriving at their final destinations.

Volume LTL Freight

This ‘less than load’ method of road freight works on volume instead of weight, and is used when items that might not weigh very much take up too much space. Industry officials share that volume LTL freight charges are applied when a package weighing less than around 3kg per cubic foot occupies more than 750 cubic feet on a trailer. This could lead to a cubic capacity penalty which pushes the freight charge up.