Cargo Van Loads
With The Rate On Every Listing

What kind of freight moves in a cargo van?

One to three pallets, usually under 3,000 lb, on a window somebody is watching: automotive and aerospace parts into a plant that has run short, medical and laboratory samples, printed material and trade-show freight, and the small end of general LTL. Almost all of it is somebody paying for speed rather than for distance.

Cargo van freight is defined by urgency and size, not by industry. The common categories are automotive and aerospace parts moving between a supplier and a plant that has run short, medical and laboratory samples on a fixed delivery window, printed material and trade-show booths, and the small end of general LTL that a shipper would rather not consolidate. Almost all of it shares one property: somebody is paying for speed, because a pallet of parts sitting in a cross-dock costs more than the freight.

That is why the segment behaves differently from truckload. Cargo van rates per mile are typically higher than dry van rates per mile, and the loads are shorter, a great deal of it is 100 to 500 miles, often same-day. The trade-off is volume: you cover fewer miles per load, so the number of loads you book in a week matters more than the number on any one of them.

What fits, and what does not

A standard cargo van, a Transit Connect, a ProMaster City, an NV200 class vehicle, has roughly 4 ft by 4 ft of usable floor between the wheel wells and about 8 ft of length. That is two 48x40 pallets on the floor, three if the shipper is loading loose and the freight stacks. Payload is the harder limit: most of these vehicles are rated between 1,500 and 3,000 lb, and the rating is for cargo plus driver plus fuel plus everything already bolted to the van.

The mistake that costs new van drivers money is bidding on a load by its pallet count and discovering the weight at the dock. A pallet of paper, tile or fasteners will exceed a small van's payload on its own. Read the weight before the dimensions, every time, and know your own payload figure, it is on the door jamb sticker, and it is not the same as the GVWR.

What you need before you can haul it

The single most misunderstood point in this segment: a cargo van is under the weight at which the federal safety regulations apply, but it is not under the requirement for operating authority. If you are hauling somebody else's freight across a state line for money, you need a USDOT number and interstate for-hire operating authority, the MC number, regardless of how small the vehicle is. Weight decides which safety rules apply to you. It does not decide whether you are allowed to be in business.

• USDOT number and interstate for-hire operating authority (MC), whatever the vehicle weighs.
• Public liability insurance, the federal minimum for non-hazardous freight in a vehicle under 10,001 lb is $300,000, against $750,000 for heavier equipment. Most brokers will ask for more than the minimum.
• Cargo insurance. There is no federal minimum for general freight, but $50,000 to $100,000 is the figure brokers commonly require before they will tender a load.
• A BOC-3 process agent filing, and a UCR registration renewed each year.

If you have not filed for authority yet, start there rather than with the board, the whole sequence is set out in our guide to getting your own authority as an owner-operator.

How to make the numbers work

A cargo van is the cheapest way into freight and the easiest way to be busy without being profitable. The three things that decide which one you are: deadhead, wait time and payment terms. What it costs to get started, from the van to the insurance, is in how to start a cargo van business.

1. Deadhead. A 200-mile load that starts 120 miles from where you sat is a 320-mile day paid for 200. Price the empty miles into every bid, or filter to loads that start where you already are.
2. Detention. Expedited freight is loaded and unloaded by hand more often than not. Agree the free time and the detention rate before you accept, because a four-hour wait erases the premium the load was paying.
3. Payment terms. Quick-pay at a discount is worth it early and expensive later. Know the broker's standard terms before you haul, not after you invoice.

The board shows the rate on every posting, which is the point of it, you can judge all three of those before you spend a phone call, and you can see what a lane has actually been paying rather than what one broker says it pays. To put a figure on the third one, the rate per mile calculator takes the rate, the loaded and deadhead miles and what the van costs you to run, and says what the load actually leaves you.

Every cargo van load on this board shows its rate before you call, and posting is free for brokers and shippers, which is why the freight is here. See how it works for carriers.