Loading Metre (LDM) Calculator for Road Freight

A loading metre — LDM, also written LM, ldm, or mètre plancher in French and Lademeter in German — measures floor footprint, not volume. It answers one question: how much truck length does this freight take away from the carrier?

Because the trailer floor is billed across its whole width, the convention fixes that width at 2.40 m and expresses everything in metres of length:

Height never enters the LDM formula. A 0.40 LDM pallet stays 0.40 LDM whether it is 80 cm or 220 cm tall — the height only matters when you ask whether something can be stacked on top of it. And a 13.60 m trailer is 13.60 LDM, not 34: the "34" you see quoted online is a pallet count, not a loading-metre count. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers, and it treats LDM exactly this way inside its mpl_bracket rate grids.

The formula is short enough to keep in your head:

LDM per unit = (L × W) ÷ 2.40 ÷ s — where L and W are in metres and s is the number of units stacked on top of each other (s = 1 when the freight is not stackable). Then total LDM = Σ (quantity × LDM per unit), rounded up to your tariff's step.

Worked example. Ten EUR pallets, not stackable, on a 2.40 m billing width:

• Footprint per pallet: 1.20 × 0.80 = 0.96 m²
• LDM per pallet: 0.96 ÷ 2.40 = 0.40 LDM
• Total: 10 × 0.40 = 4.00 LDM, or 29.4% of a 13.60 m trailer, leaving 9.60 m of floor
• Same shipment declared stackable two high: 4.00 ÷ 2 = 2.00 LDM

Two special cases the calculator handles for you. If a piece is wider than the billing width, or cannot be secured beside anything else, it takes the full width and its LDM equals its length. If you enter a kg-per-LDM ratio (1500, 1750, 1850 or 2000 kg are all in use, none is a standard), the tool also returns the LDM weight equivalent used by carriers who price on a floor-metre minimum.

The formula is universal. The inputs are negotiated. Four conventions explain almost every disagreement:

Stacking is the expensive one. It is a commercial decision, not a mathematical one: freight declared stackable and then refused at the dock is re-measured flat, and the invoice doubles. That is why this calculator always displays the non-stackable scenario beside your declared one — quote the number you can defend.

Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, stores these conventions per carrier and per grid so nobody has to remember which carrier bills on 2.40 m and which rounds to 0.5 LDM.

On their own, loading metres are not money. The chain from LDM to an invoice looks like this:

1. LDM — this calculator: footprint ÷ billing width, rounded.
2. Chargeable weight — many tariffs convert LDM into kilograms (LDM × kg per LDM) and keep the highest of actual, volumetric and LDM weight.
3. Rate bracket — the figure selects a line in the carrier's grid for the destination zone.
4. Surcharges and options — indexed fuel surcharge, tail lift, ADR, ad valorem insurance, delivery appointment.
5. Margin — your markup turns the buy price into the customer's sell price.

Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers and forwarders that runs all five steps from the rate grids you build yourself — Excel or CSV, no carrier API and no EDI. Its mpl_bracket grid type is built on the linear-metre brackets described here, alongside weight_zone, pallet and hybrid_weight. Margins (percent using p/(1-m), or a fixed amount per bracket) are applied server-side, so your customer sees a sell price and never a buy price. Quotes are referenced Q-YYYY-NNNN and shipments S-YYYY-NNNN, in EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, CAD, MAD or PLN, in English, French, Spanish or German. Plans are €49, €149 and €399 per month, with a 14-day trial and no card required.