Quick answer

When does a dedicated vehicle beat paying per pallet?

Build your fleet around a dedicated vehicle when you are filling most of it, running the same lane every week, or need the truck on your timing rather than the network's. Up to about half a trailer, shared freight is cheaper because you pay for the space you use; past that the run price wins. A dedicated vehicle is priced by lane and vehicle on the booking page, and regular freight is priced as a committed lane rather than trip by trip.

A truck and driver that is yours.

Pick the vehicles, set the days and hours, choose a term and see the day, week and month price on the spot. Request it and we confirm the vehicle, driver and start date within a business day.

What is in the price

Vehicle and driver on the pattern you set, fuel levy included
Exclusive to you: any drops, any return loads, inside the hours
Named driver from weekly terms
Extra hours and km at the vehicle's rate, tolls at cost

Terms

Casual: a day at a time
Weekly and monthly: one period minimum, then rolling
3, 6 and 12 months: locked in, 30 days' notice at the end, 7 to 12% off
12 hours a day is one driver's legal limit. Longer days get a relay

Quote a dedicated vehicle Quote regular runs

When does a dedicated vehicle beat paying per pallet?

A dedicated vehicle is yours for the day. It carries your freight only, goes where you send it, and nothing else is loaded on it. That is worth paying for in three situations: when you are filling most of a trailer anyway, when the timing has to be yours rather than a window, and when the work is a repeating run rather than a one off consignment.

The third one is where most of the money is. A business doing the same three drops every Tuesday is usually paying shared freight rates on every leg and a premium on each one. Put it on a standing vehicle and the cost per drop falls, the driver learns the sites, and the receivers stop ringing to ask where it is.

Which truck size does the work need?

Size it to the heaviest day, not the average one, then use the spare capacity rather than paying twice. A 8 pallet truck that is full on Monday and half empty on Thursday still beats hiring a 6 pallet truck and putting the overflow on shared freight every Monday. The whole fleet is listed with real capacity figures so you can check the numbers rather than take our word for it.

Access decides it as often as capacity. A semi needs room to turn and a dock at both ends. If any site on the run is tight, the whole run drops to a rigid, and that is better found now than on the first morning.

What does a term commitment buy you?

Longer terms are cheaper because the vehicle and the driver are committed, so neither sits idle between jobs and neither has to be found at short notice. That is a real cost coming out, not a discount being handed over. It also buys you a named driver, which matters more than most operators admit: a driver who knows the sites, the receivers and the paperwork makes fewer mistakes than a different one each week.

What it costs you is flexibility. A locked term is a fixed cost whether the volume turns up or not, so commit to the floor of your volume and quote the peaks separately rather than sizing the contract for your best month.

How far can one driver legally go in a day?

Twelve hours is one driver's legal working day under heavy vehicle fatigue rules, and that includes loading, waiting and unloading, not just the driving. A run that looks like eleven hours on paper is usually thirteen once a site keeps the truck waiting. Longer days need a second driver on a relay, which is quoted as such instead of being pushed onto a driver who then cannot legally finish.