LTL weight per shipment measures the average pounds of freight in each less-than-truckload shipment.
A simplified calculation is:
average weight per shipment = total LTL pounds ÷ LTL shipments
Weight per shipment explains freight mix
Shipment count tells investors how many shipments move through the network. Weight per shipment tells them how large those shipments are on average.
Old Dominion Freight Line reported average LTL weight per shipment of 1,503 pounds in the second quarter of 2026. XPO reported 1,311 pounds under its North American LTL reporting scope.
Those figures should not be read as a direct quality ranking. Customer mix, freight type, geography, shipment distance, pricing strategy, and network design differ by carrier.
Weight connects shipments to tonnage
The relationship is:
daily tonnage ≈ daily shipments × weight per shipment ÷ 2,000
If daily shipments are flat but average shipment weight rises 5%, daily tonnage should also rise roughly 5%, subject to rounding and reporting-scope differences.
That makes weight per shipment important when LTL Shipments per Day and LTL Tonnage per Day tell different stories.
Heavier freight is not automatically better
A higher average weight can improve trailer utilization in some circumstances, but it can also change handling requirements, commodity mix, claims exposure, pickup-and-delivery economics, and revenue yield.
Old Dominion notes that weight per shipment is an indicator of freight mix and generally has an inverse relationship with revenue per hundredweight.
That is one reason investors should not interpret changes in LTL Revenue per Hundredweight as pure pricing.
Average weight can hide distribution changes
The same average could come from many medium-sized shipments or a mixture of very light and very heavy freight.
It also says nothing directly about shipment distance, service level, freight class, or profitability.
For company comparisons, preserve the carrier's definition and reporting scope rather than assuming every average weight measure is constructed identically.
Primary-source examples
LTL weight per shipment is most useful as a freight-mix measure that explains how shipment count turns into tonnage and influences yield.
Part of the LTL Freight Operating Model
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