Sprinter Van Loads
Posted With The Rate Attached

What can a sprinter van carry that a cargo van cannot?

Three to five pallets against two, roughly 3,000 to 4,000 lb against 1,500 to 3,000, and a load floor a forklift can reach. The pallet count is the smaller half of it: the height and the rear door width are what let a shipper load you at a dock at all, and a great deal of expedited freight is written so that only a van like that can take it.

The gap between the two is bigger than the badge suggests. A standard cargo van gives you around 4 ft of usable width, 8 ft of length and a payload measured in hundreds of pounds. A high-roof extended sprinter gives you 12 to 15 ft of load floor, enough interior height to stand in, rear doors wide enough for a pallet jack, and a payload that starts where the small van's ends. That is the difference between two pallets loaded by hand and four or five loaded by forklift.

It is also the difference in what a shipper will tender you. A great deal of expedited freight is written as "must be forkliftable" or "dock-height loading" in the load notes, and those loads never reach a small van at all. The vehicle buys you access to a bigger pool of freight, not just a bigger load.

The freight that pays for a sprinter

• Expedited automotive and industrial parts, a line-down shipment where the freight cost is irrelevant next to the cost of the plant standing still.
• Trade show and event freight, which moves on hard deadlines in both directions and is often loaded by hand at the far end.
• Medical, pharmaceutical and laboratory shipments on a fixed window, frequently requiring a clean, enclosed, temperature-stable space rather than a full reefer.
• Retail and e-commerce store replenishment, especially the final leg into places a 53 ft trailer cannot get near.
• Partial loads that a broker would otherwise have to consolidate and wait on.

What ties these together is that the shipper is buying a delivery time rather than a per-mile rate. That is why sprinter rates per mile sit well above dry van, and why the loads are shorter, the value is in the speed, and speed does not scale past a certain distance before a truck is the better answer.

Team driving, and why it shows up in this segment

Expedited van work is one of the few corners of freight where a two-person team makes obvious commercial sense at small scale. A solo driver eventually has to stop; a team does not, and a 1,400-mile run delivered in a day rather than two is a genuinely different product. If you see sprinter loads posted with long distances and tight windows, a team is usually who they were written for.

Getting on the board

Hauling for hire across a state line requires a USDOT number and interstate operating authority regardless of vehicle weight, the small size of the vehicle does not exempt you from it. Brokers will also want to see cargo insurance, and $100,000 is a common threshold in this segment because the freight is frequently electronics or parts rather than pallets of paper.

Once you are authorised, set your equipment to sprinter van and your preferred states in your profile, and the board filters to freight your vehicle can actually take. There is more on the sequence in our guide to starting with a van, and the rate side of it in freight rates per mile by equipment type.

Every sprinter 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.