Loading Meter (LDM) Pricing in Road Freight, Explained

A loading metre is not a description of your freight. It is the unit the carrier invoice is built on. A carrier selling groupage or part-loads is selling a strip of trailer floor for the duration of a trip, and once that strip is committed nothing else travels on it. Kilos are an input to the calculation; loading metres are what actually gets sold, and therefore what gets billed. For the formal definition and the formula, see loading meter (LDM) in the glossary — what follows is what the unit does to a price.

The demonstration that catches out every new person on a quoting desk. Two consignments, same lane, same tariff:

• Three non-stackable Euro pallets of insulation panels, 400 kg in total — 3 × 0.4 = 1.2 LDM.
• Two non-stackable Euro pallets of floor tiles, 900 kg in total — 2 × 0.4 = 0.8 LDM.

Under a tariff converting floor space at 1,750 kg per loading metre, the light consignment is billed on 2,100 kg and the heavy one on 1,400 kg. The 400 kg shipment costs more than the 900 kg shipment, and the customer who queries it deserves a one-line answer: the carrier sold floor, and 1.2 metres of floor is 1.2 metres of floor whatever stands on it.

The denominator is worth memorising, because it is what a figure like "3 LDM" means commercially. A standard 13.60 m European semi-trailer is 13.6 LDM; a 7.20 m rigid is 7.2 LDM. A carrier quoting 3.0 LDM has told you it sold you roughly 22 % of a vehicle, whether the pallets weigh 600 kg or 6 tonnes.

The same unit travels under several names on tariff PDFs, and they all mean the same thing: LDM, LM or ldm; Lademeter on German, Austrian and Swiss tariffs; mètre plancher, ML or MPL on French ones; lane meter at ro-ro ferry and rail terminals, where it measures deck lane instead of trailer floor; and linear meter or floor space in English-language contracts written by non-specialists.

Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers and transport commissionaires, treats LDM as a first-class input alongside weight and pallet count, because a tariff that ignores it misprices every voluminous shipment you handle. Wider context in the rate grids and pricing category.

The formula, applied line of goods by line of goods:

LDM = (length in m × width in m ÷ 2.4) × quantity ÷ stacking tiers

Four rules make it survive contact with an operations desk.

Measure the pallet, not the goods. A carton of 0.90 × 0.70 m sitting on a Euro pallet occupies 1.20 × 0.80 m of floor, because the pallet footprint is what the carrier cannot resell. Overhang only counts the other way: goods that spill past the edge of the pallet are measured on their own dimensions.

Length and width are interchangeable — use it as a check. The formula ignores orientation, which gives you a free sanity test on any figure you are unsure of. A Euro pallet loaded with its 1.20 m side across the trailer fits two abreast in 2.40 m and consumes 0.80 m of length: 0.80 ÷ 2 = 0.4 LDM. Turned through 90°, three fit abreast and consume 1.20 m: 1.20 ÷ 3 = 0.4 LDM. Same answer, and exactly what (1.20 × 0.80) / 2.4 returns.

Only divide by tiers when stacking is actually permitted. Eight industrial pallets of 1.20 × 1.00 m are 8 × 0.5 = 4.0 LDM on one tier and 2.0 LDM double-stacked. Halving the figure on an assumption instead of a declaration is the most expensive mistake in this guide — read the stackability section below before you divide anything by two.

Sum the lines, then let the tariff finish the job. Loading metres are additive across lines, but the raw sum is rarely the billed figure. Almost every LDM tariff imposes a minimum quantity or a minimum charge at the bottom of the scale, so a single half pallet at 0.2 LDM is not priced at 0.2, and every tariff states a rounding step that lifts the total — the divisor and rounding conventions are the subject of the next section.

Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, computes loading metres from the dimensions declared on the quote request and applies the grid minimum server-side, so the metres the engine prices are the metres the customer declared rather than a figure retyped into a spreadsheet. Check a consignment against the loading metre calculator before you commit a price.

The divisor has a physical origin. A European curtainsider or box semi-trailer has an internal width of roughly 2.44 to 2.48 m, and the industry rounded it down to 2.40 m as the pricing width because that is the figure at which two 1.20 m pallet sides fit exactly abreast. Divide a footprint in square metres by 2.4 and you get the metres of length that footprint consumes. That is the whole derivation — no coefficient, no negotiation.

Two consequences that matter when you are reading a tariff.

The divisor is not universal. A handful of carriers price on 2.44 m or 2.45 m, and ferry lane-meter tariffs use their own deck width. On 4.0 LDM the difference between a 2.40 and a 2.45 divisor is about 0.08 LDM — small per shipment, systematic across a year. Read the divisor off the tariff instead of assuming it.

The formula understates wide items. Any item wider than about 1.20 m leaves a residual strip too narrow to pair with a standard pallet, so it consumes its full length whatever the formula says. Take a single crate of 2.00 × 1.80 m. The formula returns (2.00 × 1.80) / 2.4 = 1.50 LDM. Physically it blocks 2.00 m of floor, because the 0.60 m left beside it takes nothing standard. Most part-load tariffs state the rule explicitly — goods that cannot be loaded side by side are charged at their full length — and the ones that do not state it will still correct the figure after loading. At an LDM floor of 1,750 kg per metre, that 0.50 LDM gap is 875 kg of chargeable weight you did not quote.

Rounding is the third convention. Most European tariffs lift the result to the next 0.1 LDM, some to 0.5, a few to the full metre. A 2.42 LDM shipment is 2.5 LDM under one rule and 3.0 LDM under another — half a metre of paid floor, decided by a line of contract text. Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers of 2 to 25 people, exposes the divisor and the rounding step as configurable settings per grid and computes LDM from declared dimensions, so a wide-item rule captured at rebuild is applied on every quote instead of living in one person's head. Check a consignment against the loading metre calculator before you commit a price, and see the four types of road freight rate grids for the grid shapes this feeds.

The standard footprints and the loading metres they consume, computed on the 2.4 divisor:

Read the last column against the fourth one. 13.6 LDM divided by 0.4 is 34 Euro pallets, while the loading figure the whole industry quotes is 33. The missing pallet is real: the final row cannot be split between a two-abreast and a three-abreast pattern, and a straight-loaded trailer loses a few centimetres at the doors. The formula is a billing convention, not a load plan — never use it to promise a customer that 34 pallets will fit. For that question, use the pallets per truck calculator instead.

Multiplying is then immediate. Six Euro pallets on one tier are 6 × 0.4 = 2.4 LDM. Ten industrial pallets are 10 × 0.5 = 5.0 LDM. Four half pallets are 0.8 LDM.

Two conditions sit under every figure in that table, and both are commercial rather than physical. The first is the billing width: 2.40 m. On a tariff priced at 2.44 m the same Euro pallet is 0.39 LDM, and across a year of groupage that gap is not noise. The second is that each value is one pallet per floor position — the non-stackable case. Declared stackable two high, the pallet consumes half. Turned around, that is the sentence to keep: declaring freight non-stackable doubles its floor space, and at 1,750 kg per LDM it doubles the chargeable weight with it.

The error that costs real money is accepting a pallet count without the format. "Six pallets" is 2.4 LDM if they are Euro pallets and 3.0 LDM if they are industrial — 25 % more floor space, before stackability has even been mentioned, and roughly 1,050 kg of extra chargeable weight at a 1,750 kg/LDM floor. Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, asks for the footprint on the quote request rather than inferring it, and recomputes the metres server-side on every quote. Check a consignment against the loading metre calculator before you commit a price.

Stackability is the single largest swing factor in LDM pricing, and it is the field most often left blank on a quote request. The arithmetic is blunt: stacking two tiers halves the floor positions, so it halves the loading metres, so it halves everything derived from them.

Eight industrial pallets of 1.20 × 1.00 m:

• Non-stackable: 8 floor positions × 0.5 = 4.0 LDM.
• Stackable two high: 4 floor positions × 0.5 = 2.0 LDM.

Three practical points a tariff will not spell out for you.

Stackable is a property of the pair, not the pallet. Goods declared stackable are only stacked if the carrier finds a compatible partner in the same consolidation — same lane, same day, similar weight, a flat top to bear the load. Carriers price the entitlement, not the outcome, so you gain the discount at quotation whether or not the stack happens.

Height limits bite before the second tier. A pallet loaded to 1.80 m cannot be double-stacked under a 2.60 to 2.70 m internal height without exceeding it. If the declared height plus the pallet base is more than half the internal height, "stackable" is not achievable and the carrier will reprice.

Top-load-only is a third state. Some goods may carry nothing but may themselves be placed on top of others. That earns part of the discount on a mixed consolidation and none of it on a homogeneous one. If your tariff has no field for it, treat it as non-stackable and say so to the customer.

The same discipline applies one field earlier: a pallet count accepted without a pallet type is a 25 % error in floor space waiting to happen, before stackability is even discussed. Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, asks for the footprint and the stacking declaration on the quote request itself — the full field list is in what information you need to quote a road freight shipment — and carries both through to the quote, so the value the customer declared is the value the engine priced. The quote reference Q-YYYY-NNNN records it if the carrier disputes the metres later.

Most carriers do not stop at loading metres. They convert LDM into a weight so the shipment can be priced through an ordinary weight bracket, using a contract clause that reads something like "minimum 1,750 kg per loading metre". That is the LDM floor. The chargeable weight becomes the greater of the actual gross weight and LDM × the ratio.

The ratio is not a standard. Values between 1,500 and 2,000 kg per LDM appear in live European tariffs, and the same carrier may use different ratios by lane or by product. Read it off your contract; never inherit it from another carrier's grid.

Row D is the wide-item rule from earlier: the formula would return 1.50 LDM, the tariff charges 2.00.

The LDM floor is not the only candidate. A volumetric rule — typically 333 kg per cubic metre on road, the 1:3 conversion — produces a third figure. On shipment A, at a loaded height of 1.60 m, the volume is 8 × 1.92 = 15.36 m³, giving 5,115 kg. Set against an actual weight of 1,520 kg and an LDM floor of 7,000 kg, the chargeable weight is 7,000 kg. For palletised groupage the LDM floor almost always wins, which is why it governs the price. Whether both rules apply together is a configuration choice per grid, not a law. See the chargeable weight definition and the chargeable weight calculator.

End to end, on shipment A from the table above: 8 industrial pallets, 1.20 × 1.00 m, non-stackable, 190 kg each, 1,520 kg gross, to zone 4.

1. Loading metres: 8 × 0.5 = 4.0 LDM.
2. LDM floor at 1,750 kg/LDM: 4.0 × 1,750 = 7,000 kg chargeable, against 1,520 kg actual.
3. Zone 4 bracket 5,000–9,999 kg, rate €8.60 per 100 kg: 70 × 8.60 = €602.00 buy.
4. Indexed fuel surcharge at 12.5 %: 602.00 × 1.125 = €677.25.
5. Sell price at a 16 % margin using p/(1−m): 677.25 / 0.84 = €806.25.

Now price the same shipment on its actual weight, which is what happens when the dimensions never reach the person quoting. 1,520 kg falls in the 1,000–1,999 kg bracket at €13.90 per 100 kg: 15.2 × 13.90 = €211.28, plus fuel €237.69, sold at €282.96. The carrier still invoices €677.25. The brokerage absorbs €394.29 on one consignment, and finds out four weeks later on the invoice reconciliation.

That is the entire commercial case for handling LDM inside the pricing engine rather than in a spreadsheet. Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, stores LDM tariffs as mpl_bracket grids, applies the LDM floor as a taxable-weight rule before any margin is added, and recalculates the figure server-side on every quote — the customer sees €806.25 and never the €602.00 buy rate or the 16 % margin. When the quote is accepted, Q-YYYY-NNNN becomes shipment S-YYYY-NNNN carrying the same metres.

Cargavo does not connect to carrier APIs or EDI, and it is not a load board: the LDM tariff arrives as the Excel or CSV file the carrier already sent you. Related reading: percentage versus fixed margin rules, the rate grids and pricing category, and plans from €49/month on the pricing page.