Freight rate calculator
Freight Rate Calculation
Work out a shipment's chargeable weight. Enter the dimensions and weight; volumetric weight, which figure applies and the rate on your own tariff come out together.
Freight rate calculator
Enter weight and volume; the chargeable weight appears as you type. The unit price and cost fields are your own figures — leave them blank and they stay out.
Enter either a weight or a volume — the chargeable weight appears here as you type.
How is a freight rate calculated?
A freight rate is not a single multiplication. First you find the shipment's chargeable weight, then you apply your own tariff to it. The step usually skipped is the first: the price is quoted off the weighbridge figure and the room the load takes in the trailer never enters the calculation.
In road freight the volumetric conversion is taken as 333 kilograms per cubic metre. Find the volume in cubic metres, multiply by 333, and you have the volumetric weight. The rate is built on whichever is greater, the volumetric weight or the actual weight.
The logic is simple: light but bulky freight fills the trailer, and that vehicle cannot take anything else. What you pay for is not kilograms but occupied capacity. Two shipments of the same weight, one dense and one bulky, do not pay the same rate.
- Load
- 3 m³ volume, 400 kg actual weight
- Volumetric weight
- 3 × 333 = 999 kg
- Chargeable
- 999 kg — volumetric is greater
- Counter-example
- 6 m³ volume, 3,500 kg actual weight
- Chargeable
- 3,500 kg — actual weight wins this time
Weight, volume, loading metres: which one applies?
The three measures ask the same question from different angles. Actual weight measures the tonnage limit, volumetric weight measures the trailer's volume, and loading metres measure the floor the load occupies. On part loads the carrier looks at whichever fills first and builds the price on that.
You will notice the conventions do not agree: volumetric weight counts a cubic metre as 333 kilograms, while a loading metre counts as 1,750 kilograms and one loading metre is roughly 6.5 cubic metres. They do not contradict each other — they measure different things. One treats the trailer's volume as the constraint, the other its floor.
Which one applies in practice depends on the carrier's tariff. Asking which basis is used when you request a quote closes the gap before it appears after the trip closes.
The three cost items quotes miss most
None of them hide in the rate itself. All three hide in the cost that produces it.
01
A return load is assumed
The price is quoted assuming freight will be found for the return leg. If it is not, the empty kilometres have to come out of this same rate, and the margin goes with them.
02
Waiting time is undefined
The hours spent loading and unloading do not appear in the quote. Half a day inside a facility stops the vehicle taking a second job that day — and the lost trip is written into no line at all.
03
Tolls are estimated in bulk
Motorway and bridge charges are several separate costs spread along the route, and they vary by vehicle class. A bulk estimate comes in consistently low on motorway-heavy corridors.
Related reading
How to Calculate Freight Cost: A Carrier's Real Cost Formula
Freight cost is not the price quoted to the shipper; it is the sum of the ten cost items a carrier covers to make a trip happen.
How to Calculate and Reduce Empty Miles in Trucking
The empty-miles ratio is a fleet's invisible cost: here is the formula, why empty running happens and how operations cut it down.
How to Calculate Profit per Truck
The vehicle is what earns, not any single trip: the full per-truck chain from revenue to net profit, item by item, with a worked monthly example.
How Is Road Freight Rate (Navlun) Calculated? [2026]
What breaks a freight rate is not the formula but the items that never reach the quote: the empty return leg and the tolls along the route.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a freight rate calculated?
- First you find the shipment's chargeable weight, then you apply a tariff to it. The chargeable weight is whichever is greater, the actual weight or the volumetric weight. Volumetric weight is the volume in cubic metres multiplied by 333. Distance, the tolls along the route, waiting time and whether a return load exists set the rest of the price.
- What is the freight rate formula?
- The formula has two steps. First: volumetric weight = volume in m³ × 333. Second: chargeable weight = the greater of actual and volumetric weight; freight = chargeable weight × unit price. The unit price is the carrier's own tariff and varies with the type of goods, the corridor and the season.
- What is the difference between volumetric and actual weight?
- Actual weight is the figure off the weighbridge. Volumetric weight is the weight equivalent of the space the load occupies in the trailer, found by multiplying the volume by 333. For light but bulky freight the volumetric figure comes out higher, and because that load fills the trailer and stops the vehicle taking other work, the price is built on it.
- Which cost items get missed when pricing freight?
- Three most often: assuming a return load will be found and leaving the empty kilometres out of the price, leaving loading and unloading waiting time undefined in the quote, and estimating motorway and bridge tolls in bulk rather than gantry by gantry. All three surface after the trip closes and come out of that trip's margin.
- What does freight rate software change?
- Worked by hand, the chargeable weight and the route cost are kept in two separate places and the quote usually goes out before they meet. Software that reads the request and brings the dimensions, the distance and the tolls into one calculation does that at the moment of quoting, so whether the price has fallen below the cost floor is visible before the quote is sent.
Stop working the rate out by hand on every quote
Seferi reads the incoming request, and the chargeable weight and route cost come out together while the quote is built; when a price drops below your cost floor you see it before the quote goes out.
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