ShipStation LTL Launch: The Time-Saving Play for SMBs

ShipStation’s LTL launch could be a real time-saver for SMB shipping teams. In this discussion, Spiceology and ShipStation break down how manual shipping tasks eat up hours, how label time dropped from minutes to seconds, and why parcel-LTL integration matters when orders scale fast. If your team is still bouncing between carrier sites, managing exceptions by hand, or stitching together disconnected workflows, this conversation gets straight to the operational payoff. #ShippingAutomation #LTLShipping #EcommerceLogistics

ShipStation has released what it describes as a fully featured LTL capability within its platform, targeting small and mid-sized businesses that currently juggle separate systems for parcel, less-than-truckload, and full truckload shipping. The launch is designed to bring more modes under one interface and eliminate the need for shippers to maintain multiple sources of truth.

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 their parcel operations for years. Ned Woodward, who manages logistics for Spiceology, said the company would previously 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: when restaurants shut down, Spiceology’s direct-to-consumer orders surged roughly 50% overnight, requiring the company to rapidly rethink its fulfillment workflow.

Woodward said 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, 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.

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 while using automated rules.

“This is not an MVP. This is actually a fully featured LTL capability in ShipStation,” said Rimel, noting the company drew on years of customer feedback from its ShipStation Global freight operations to build out the release.

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.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.