A first order is rarely a full trailer. The question is whether to pay for a whole reefer anyway, buy a part load, or accept consolidated groupage through a cross-dock. The honest answer depends on volume, on how much the product tolerates handling, and on how much a rejected pallet would cost you.
The three formats
Full load
You buy the whole trailer or the whole container. It loads at one origin and unloads at one destination. Nobody else’s cargo shares the box, nobody else’s delivery stop opens your doors.
In road terms this is a full truckload of 33 euro pallets. In sea terms it is a full container load, usually a forty-foot high-cube reefer, which takes roughly twenty to twenty-three euro pallets on the floor depending on the container model and the pallet footprint you use.
Part load
You buy a defined block of pallet spaces on a trailer that carries one or two other consignments, usually direct, with a small number of stops. Pricing is per pallet space with a minimum.
Groupage
Your pallets enter a consolidator’s network, move through one or more temperature-controlled cross-docks, and are re-loaded onto trunk vehicles. Pricing is per pallet or per hundred kilograms with a temperature surcharge.
What actually drives the price
| Cost driver | Full load | Part load | Groupage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basis | Per trailer | Per pallet space, block booking | Per pallet or per 100 kg |
| Unit cost at low volume | Very high | Moderate | Lowest |
| Unit cost at high volume | Lowest | Moderate | Highest |
| Handling events | Two | Two to four | Four or more |
| Transit predictability | High | Moderate | Lower, network schedule driven |
| Temperature risk | Lowest | Moderate | Highest |
| Documentation effort | One consignment | One consignment | One consignment, more touchpoints |
The two numbers that decide it are the full-trailer rate on the corridor and the per-pallet groupage rate. Divide the first by the second and you have your break-even in pallets. If a Ukraine to Netherlands reefer trailer is quoted as a single figure and groupage is quoted per pallet, the crossover is usually somewhere in the high teens to low twenties of pallets. Below that, part load or groupage; above it, take the whole trailer even if you do not fill it, because you also buy the door discipline.
The risk you are actually buying
For frozen fruit the difference between formats is not mainly money. It is the number of times a pallet is moved and the number of times a door opens.
- Every cross-dock is an opening event and a period on a dock at ambient. Well-run frozen networks move pallets fast and through temperature-controlled bays, but the exposure is real and it is cumulative.
- Shared trailers mean shared stops. Your temperature record includes somebody else’s delivery in Poznan.
- Groupage networks reserve the right to reroute. A pallet can spend an extra night in a hub that is running at minus eighteen but with heavy door traffic.
- Damage risk rises with each forklift movement. Frozen cartons on a stretched pallet are not forgiving.
A practical rule: use groupage for robust, well-packed, lower-value goods and for samples. Use part load for regular mid-size volumes on a stable corridor. Use full loads for anything where clumping would make the product unusable, for organic or certified goods where segregation matters, and for anything you intend to sell on a specification that mentions free-flowing.
Segregation and compliance
If the goods are organic, the chain has to keep them identifiable and separate from non-organic goods at every stage. Groupage does not make that impossible, but it does mean the consolidator has to be part of your organic control arrangements and has to be able to demonstrate segregation and record keeping. Ask before booking, not afterwards. The same applies to allergen segregation on mixed loads and to kosher or halal chains where a certifier has views about shared equipment.
Packing for the format you chose
- Groupage: heavier board grade, full pallet overhang avoided, corner boards, five wraps of stretch film, pallet label on two adjacent faces, and a clear top sheet so a forklift driver in a hub can identify the consignment without reading a manifest.
- Part load: the same, minus some of the paranoia.
- Full load: standard export packing is enough, but do not use the format as an excuse for thin cartons. The pallets still get moved twice.
Whatever the format, a frozen carton is only as strong as it is cold. Board loses stiffness as it picks up moisture in a warm dock, so packing discipline and temperature discipline are the same discipline.
How to run the comparison honestly
- Get three quotes for the same lane in the same week: full trailer, part load for your real pallet count, groupage per pallet.
- Add the destination costs that differ: unloading, palletised versus loose handling, any inbound booking fee the distribution centre charges per consignment.
- Add an expected quality cost. If groupage historically gives you one rejected pallet in forty and a full load gives you one in four hundred, put a number on it.
- Add the working capital effect of the different transit times.
- Compare landed cost per kilogram of saleable product, not freight cost per shipment.
Related reading: the short answer on FCL versus LTL, how many pallets fit in a reefer, and the reefer road transport guide.