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Parcel shipping handles individual boxes up to about 70 pounds through carriers like Canada Post, UPS, and FedEx. Freight handles palletized or very heavy loads through trucking networks. The switch point is weight, size, and whether your boxes can ride a pallet: one dense 200-pound crate nearly always ships cheaper as freight than as several parcels.
| Parcel | Freight (LTL) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical unit | One box, handled by hand | One or more pallets, moved by forklift |
| Weight ceiling per piece | Roughly 70 lb before surcharges or refusal | Thousands of pounds; trucks are the limit |
| How it is priced | Per package, by weight or dimensional weight | By freight class, weight, and distance |
| Pickup and delivery | Door to door, one driver | Dock to dock by default; liftgate and inside delivery cost extra |
| Tracking | Scan at every stop | Coarser: picked up, in transit, delivered |
There is no single legal boundary, but the practical one is the parcel carriers' maximums. Each carrier publishes a maximum weight and maximum combined length-plus-girth per package; go past them and the parcel is refused or hit with an oversize penalty that often costs more than freight would have. A good rule of thumb: if one item is over about 150 pounds, if nothing a person can lift is inside the box, or if the shipment fills a pallet, you are in freight territory.
Palletization is the real tell. Freight carriers move freight on pallets because forklifts and pallet jacks are how warehouses load trucks. A shipment that can be stacked on a standard pallet, shrink-wrapped, and picked up by a truck with a liftgate is freight even if it is relatively light. Conversely, ten loose 40-pound boxes are still parcel, just an expensive parcel: freight only beats parcel when the boxes consolidate onto one handling unit.
Freight pricing rewards density. Parcel carriers price each box separately, so shipping ten heavy boxes as parcels means paying the heavy rate ten times; on a pallet, freight carriers price the whole pallet as one unit and charge by freight class, which classifies goods by how much space they take relative to their weight. Dense, stackable goods (machine parts, tiles, books in bulk) get favorable classes, which is why a pallet of tile can cost less to move than the same weight split into parcels.
The crossover usually appears when a shipment is both heavy and going a long distance. For a light box going across town, parcel wins easily. For a 500-pound load going across the country, freight usually wins by a lot because a truck carrying your pallet alongside others splits the fuel and driver cost across many shippers (that shared-truck model is what "LTL," less-than-truckload, means). Get quotes both ways when a shipment sits near the boundary; freight brokers quote free and the difference can be dramatic.
Accessorial charges are the classic shock. The base freight quote assumes a loading dock at both ends and someone with a forklift to unload. A residential delivery, a liftgate truck, a delivery appointment, or inside delivery each adds a fee, and these stack: a residential liftgate delivery with an appointment can add several surcharges to a quote that looked cheap. Always tell the broker exactly what the pickup and delivery locations look like.
Packing standards are stricter, not looser. Freight gets stacked under other freight, so boxes must survive weight on top: use double-wall corrugated boxes or crates, stack heaviest at the bottom, and shrink-wrap the pallet so nothing shifts. Carriers can and do reclassify freight at a terminal if the packaging looks wrong, which raises the bill after the fact. And unlike parcels, freight damage claims take longer and inspectors expect to see the packaging, so keep the pallet wrap intact until the driver notes any damage on the delivery receipt.
No. LetterAgent sells Canada-only flat-rate Xpresspost parcel labels, with a 5 kg maximum, through a simple quote-approve-pay flow with your AI assistant. That covers the small-parcel side of shipping: one box, one label, door to door. Freight is a different industry with its own brokers, pallets, and pricing; if your shipment needs a forklift, you need a freight broker, not a parcel label.
Ready to ship it? Get a shipping label with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and get your label.
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