ShipStation has released what it describes as a fully featured less-than-truckload (LTL) capability within its platform, targeting small and mid-sized businesses that currently juggle separate systems for parcel, LTL, and full truckload shipping. The launch is designed to bring more shipping modes under a single interface and eliminate the need for shippers to maintain multiple sources of truth. The move positions ShipStation, long known primarily as a parcel-focused e-commerce shipping platform, in closer competition with transportation management systems and digital freight tools that have traditionally served LTL shippers.

For shippers like Spiceology, a Spokane, Washington-based spice brand that expanded from farmers markets into big-box retail and broadline food service distribution, ShipStation has served as the hub of parcel operations for years. Ned Woodward, who manages logistics for Spiceology, said the company previously had to visit individual carrier websites to manually generate labels before adopting ShipStation — a process that consumed hours and required multiple employees to process a limited number of orders.

"Taking 5 to 10 seconds to print a label versus 1 to 2 minutes per order, that's real savings right there," said Woodward. He noted that COVID served as a forcing function for change: when restaurants shut down, Spiceology's direct-to-consumer orders surged roughly 50% overnight, requiring the company to rapidly rethink its fulfillment workflow.

According to Woodward, automation rules and rate shopping have delivered the most meaningful efficiency gains for Spiceology over the five years he has used the platform. Automated rate shopping captures a shipper's business logic, preferred transit times, cost thresholds, and delivery requirements, and pre-selects the carrier for each order as it imports — reducing the process to exception management rather than manual decision-making. He estimated that shaving roughly a minute off each order across hundreds of daily shipments produces material labor savings. Extending that automation to LTL is notable because freight quoting has historically been more complex than parcel, involving freight classifications and accessorial charges that vary by carrier, which has often pushed smaller shippers toward brokers or manual processes.

Travis Rimel, Chief Product Officer at ShipStation Global, emphasized that the new LTL tool is built for similar configurability, including the ability to soon split a single order across multiple shipping modes — for example, routing part of a shipment via parcel and the remainder via LTL — using automated rules.

Spiceology's logistics footprint now spans e-commerce parcel, LTL, and full truckload for big-box retail accounts, with each channel carrying distinct carrier requirements, accessorial charges, and delivery prep standards. Woodward said consolidating visibility across those modes, rather than checking three separate systems, is the immediate value he expects the new LTL integration to offer businesses like his.

ShipStation acknowledged that track-and-trace data quality degrades as shipment size moves from parcel toward truckload, and said normalizing freight data is a priority on its product roadmap. How quickly the company can close that gap will be a key indicator of whether unified multi-mode workflows become practical for smaller shippers at scale.

Source: FreightWaves