How do you calculate linear feet for an LTL shipment?

Linear feet is the trailer floor length your pallets occupy. Standard pallets load two across a roughly 96-inch-wide trailer, so divide the pallets into rows of two, multiply the number of rows by the pallet length in inches, and divide by 12. Stackable freight halves the floor positions.

What is the difference between linear feet and cubic feet?

Cubic feet is total volume — length times width times height, divided by 1,728. Linear feet is only the floor length a shipment uses on the trailer. Carriers watch linear feet because a shipment that eats too much floor can trigger linear-foot or capacity pricing regardless of its weight.

Linear Feet & Cubic Feet Calculator

See how much trailer your load actually takes — linear feet of floor space and total cube — from pallet size, count, and whether it stacks.

Length (in)

Width (in)

Height (in)

Number of Pallets

Stackable?

Trailer Inside Width (in)

Standard dry van is roughly 96″. This decides how many pallets fit side by side — change it if your equipment differs.

Linear feet

0 rows × 0 in each

linear feet

Cubic feet —

Linear feet vs. cubic feet

Cubic feet is total volume — length × width × height, divided by 1,728, times the number of pallets. It tells you how much space the freight fills. Linear feet is narrower: just the floor length your load eats on the trailer, which is what carriers watch for capacity.

Standard pallets ride two across a roughly 96-inch-wide trailer, so pallets pair off into rows and each row costs one pallet length of floor. Stack the freight two high and you halve the floor positions — and the linear feet.

Weight fills a truck by the pound. Bulky freight fills it by the foot.

Turning the pallet changes the answer

Which side faces across the trailer decides how many fit side by side. A 48×40 pallet loaded 40″-wide fits two across and burns 48″ of length per row; turned 48″-wide it still pairs up but only costs 40″ per row. Swap the length and width above to compare orientations — the same freight can land on a different linear-feet number.

Why carriers care about linear feet

A shipment that takes too much floor for its weight ties up space the carrier can’t sell to anyone else. Once a load crosses a carrier’s linear-foot threshold — often somewhere around 8 to 12 feet, depending on the carrier — it can trigger linear-foot or capacity-load pricing that reprices the whole shipment, regardless of its actual weight. Knowing your linear feet before you book tells you whether you’re near that line.