How much truck do your pallets actually take up? Fill in the pallet size, how many you are sending and whether they can be stacked, and you get the loading metres your carrier bills you for, the floor space they need, and how many trailers you have to book.
The long side of the pallet, measured across the floor. Almost always 120 cm in Europe. Measure the load, not the wood, if boxes stick out over the edge.
The short side. 80 cm is the normal euro pallet, 100 cm the chunkier block pallet, 60 cm a half pallet.
Floor to the top of the load, including the pallet itself (that is about 14 cm on its own). Most trailers stop taking pallets above 260-270 cm.
How many pallets are going out. For reference, 33 fills one standard trailer if nothing can be stacked.
Can you put one pallet on top of another? Enter 1 for no, 2 for two-high. Stacking is what makes a shipment cheap or expensive.
The length of the loading floor. 1360 cm is the usual European curtainsider, the one everybody calls a 13.6 metre trailer. Leave it as it is if you are not sure.
13.20
Loading metres (LDM)
This is the number your carrier prices on. Quote it when you ask for a rate.
Square metres of floor, in the trailer or in your warehouse.
Cubic metres of space the load fills, pallet included.
How many of these pallets fit in one trailer.
How many trucks to book for this shipment.
A one-page summary with your figures, the method and what the answer means.
Most trailers leave with air in them because orders are picked and staged in the wrong order. Getting the picking sequence right is what fills the deck.
See how order picking changes your loadsIn plain terms: a trailer is 2.40 m wide, so picture the floor as a strip of one-metre slices. Every pallet on the floor eats part of a slice, and a pallet stacked on top of another one is free, because it uses the same piece of floor. Add the slices up and you have your loading metres. The sum behind it: loading metres = (pallet length x pallet width) / 2.40 for each pallet standing on the floor.
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A pallet of pillows and a pallet of tiles take the same floor, so most road carriers charge for whichever is worse, the metres or the kilos. If your loads are light and bulky, the metres are what your invoice is really about.
Set the stack to two and watch the loading metres drop by half. That only works if the bottom pallet can carry the top one without being crushed and both are built square. Decide that per product once, and write it down, instead of arguing about it at the loading dock.
A 13.6 m curtainsider holds 33 euro pallets (80 x 120 cm) on the floor, or 66 when everything is double stacked. Block pallets of 100 x 120 cm give 26 floor positions.
One loading metre (LDM) is one metre of trailer length over the full 2.40 m width, so 2.4 m2 of floor. An 80 x 120 cm pallet takes 0.4 loading metres.
No. Enter the real footprint of the loaded pallet, including any overhang, rather than the bare pallet size. Overhang is one of the most common causes of a load that will not fit.
Dimensional weight, real weight and the chargeable weight your carrier actually bills.
Warehouse space calculatorSquare metres for a given number of pallet positions, including aisles and support space.
Safety stock calculatorSafety stock from demand and lead time variability, at the service level you choose.
Loading metres, stock levels and order points are only as good as the stock data behind them. That is what a warehouse management system keeps accurate, every movement, without anyone maintaining a spreadsheet.