Pallet & Truck Load Planner
How many pallets fit, in which orientation, and whether you run out of space or payload first. The answer to that last question decides whether you should be reducing weight or reducing height — and teams get it wrong in both directions.
Your data never leaves your browser — everything is calculated on your device.Indian road presets use typical internal dimensions. Always confirm against the actual vehicle — body builders vary by 50–100 mm.
Set to 1 for non-stackable loads.
Deducted from each interior dimension for handling room.
Volume or weight — which runs out first
Every truck load is limited by one of two things, and knowing which one changes what you should do about it.
- Volume-bound (the truck fills up before it gets heavy): the load is light and bulky. Your levers are stacking, better cube utilisation inside the cartons, and taller pallets. Negotiating a higher payload achieves nothing.
- Weight-bound (you hit the payload before the truck is full): the load is dense. Your levers are a higher-payload vehicle, splitting dense and light SKUs across trips, or mixing loads so each truck runs near both limits.
The most expensive mistake is treating a weight-bound lane as a volume problem — buying taller trucks, or spending on load-plan software, when the vehicle leaves the yard half empty and already at its legal limit.
The mixed-orientation pattern
Where a straight grid leaves a strip of wasted floor, rotating the last row by 90° often fits one or two extra pallets. The calculator checks this automatically and shows it in the diagram. On a 32 ft multi-axle running 1200×1000 pallets, this is commonly worth two extra positions per trip — which across a year of daily dispatches is a meaningful number of trucks you didn't have to hire.
Common mistakes
- Using external vehicle dimensions. A 32 ft container is not 32 ft inside. Body thickness, wheel arches and door frames take 100–200 mm. Measure the actual interior once and keep the number.
- Forgetting the pallet in the height. Loaded height means floor to top of load, including the 150 mm pallet itself. Measuring only the goods is how a load arrives at the dock 150 mm too tall to close the door.
- Assuming everything stacks. Stackability depends on the bottom pallet's crush strength, not on free height. A tier count the packaging cannot support turns into damage claims, not savings.
- Ignoring axle weight distribution. Total payload can be legal while the front or rear axle is overloaded. Heavy pallets belong distributed along the bed, not blocked at one end — this calculator sizes the load, it does not check axle loading.
- Planning at 100% of interior dimensions. Without a clearance allowance, a plan that works on paper cannot be loaded by a forklift. 50 mm is the practical minimum.
Questions people ask
Which pallet size should I standardise on?
In Indian road transport, 1200×1000 mm generally fits road containers better than the 1200×800 mm Euro pallet, because the typical 2350 mm internal width takes two 1000 mm widths plus clearance comfortably. Run both through this calculator against your actual fleet before deciding — a 30-second check that occasionally changes a five-year decision.
Does this account for cartons that don't fill the pallet?
No — it works at pallet level and assumes a built pallet. Cube utilisation within the pallet is a separate problem, and usually the bigger one: a truck loaded to 100% of its pallet positions with pallets that are themselves only 60% cubed is still shipping air.
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