Residential delivery fees by LTL carrier

A home delivery is one of the most expensive things you can add to a small LTL shipment. We read the current rules tariff for each carrier below and recorded the residential charge exactly as published, along with the carrier’s limited access charge, since the two rules overlap and are often confused.

By Ryan Poynter, SVP of LTL, Armstrong Transport Group · Updated September 24, 2026

Published residential charges at 12 LTL carriers

“cwt” means per 100 lb of shipment weight. Each tariff link opens the carrier’s own document; check the carrier’s current tariff before relying on a figure, because these items change with rate increases.

Fees are taken from each carrier’s public rules tariff as published on September 24, 2026 and change frequently. They are list charges for the contiguous U.S. and do not reflect any shipper’s negotiated pricing. Always check the carrier’s current tariff.

Rules attached to the residential item

• Old Dominion (ODFL) (Item 753-1): Charged separately for pickup and for delivery. Includes apartments, estates and farms.
• Estes Express Lines (Item 751): A liftgate (Item 567) is required if any piece weighs 50 lb or more. Terminal pickup by the consignee: $20.30.
• Saia (Item 753): Separately for pickup and delivery. Liftgate applies on residential pickup and delivery. Includes farms and rural businesses.
• XPO (Item 224 (Sec. 1)): Home businesses count as residential. Only one of the residential/limited-access type charges applies per address.
• R+L Carriers (Item 753-2): A signature fee also applies per the item.
• ABF Freight (Item 751): Per service. $240 minimum in ZIPs 70001-70499. Not charged when the limited-access charge applies.
• FedEx Freight (Item 750-2): Separately for pickup and delivery. Home businesses count as residential.
• TForce Freight (Item 753): NYC metro: $20/cwt, $250 min, $850 max. Applies if the address is a residence, regardless of how the BOL marks it.
• Southeastern Freight Lines (Item 753): SEFL does not normally perform residential pickups; exceptions need prior approval.

Residential plus liftgate: the real home-delivery cost

Homes almost never have a dock, so residential deliveries nearly always need a liftgate as well. Two tariffs spell it out: Estes requires liftgate service on a residential delivery when any piece weighs 50 lb or more, and Saia’s residential item says liftgate applies on residential pickup and delivery. The table below adds each carrier’s published residential and liftgate charges for a 870 lb shipment, the median weight across the 97,351 LTL shipments Armstrong customers moved from September 2025 – August 2026 (how we calculate these figures).

Sorted lowest to highest. Calculated from each carrier’s published rate, minimum and maximum; excludes notification, appointment, inside delivery and any doubling rules. Linehaul and fuel are not included.

The spread is $315 on the same shipment. For context, the middle 50% of single-pallet shipments Armstrong customers moved paid $255 to $525 all-in, including fuel and any accessorials. At tariff levels, the accessorials on a home delivery can be a large share of the total, which is why residential freight is worth quoting carefully.

Worked example: an 1,800 lb delivery to a house

A homeowner orders a 1,800 lb set of equipment on two pallets.

• XPO (Item 224 (Sec. 1)): 18 cwt × $16.90 = $304.20, which is above the $191 minimum and under the $932 cap, so the residential charge is $304.20. The liftgate adds $274.
• FedEx Freight (Item 750-2) charges a flat $243 for residential regardless of weight. The liftgate adds $251.28.

On light shipments a flat fee can look expensive next to a low per-cwt minimum. As the weight grows, per-cwt residential charges climb toward their caps while a flat fee stays put. FedEx Freight uses a flat residential charge; the rest scale with weight.

Limited access: the overlapping charge

Limited access covers locations that are not homes but are just as hard to serve: schools, churches, construction sites, military bases, storage units, farms, prisons and gated or secured sites. The lists differ by carrier, so the same address can be “limited access” at one carrier and a normal commercial stop at another. Several tariffs also say that only one of these charges applies to a single address. XPO applies a single charge per address per shipment when a location fits more than one definition, and ABF does not charge residential when its limited access charge applies.

From the same tariffs and dates as the residential table above. Check the carrier’s current tariff for its full list of limited access location types.

How to avoid or reduce residential delivery fees

• Offer terminal pickup. If the receiver can collect the freight at the carrier’s terminal, there is no home stop and no liftgate. Tariffs spell this out: Old Dominion’s residential item adds no charge when the consignee picks up by the first business day after arrival notice, and Estes charges $20.30 instead of its full residential fee.
• Deliver to a business address. A workplace with a dock, a local freight holding service or a store that accepts deliveries avoids the residential item entirely.
• Don’t hide the address type. Carriers can bill the residential charge after delivery when the address turns out to be a home (TForce’s tariff applies it whenever the address is a residence, however the bill of lading is marked), often alongside a liftgate or a failed-attempt fee you could have planned for by declaring it up front. See reweigh and reclass for how after-the-fact charges work.
• Compare the stacked price. Since the residential and liftgate charges together vary by hundreds of dollars between carriers, the lowest linehaul quote is often not the lowest home-delivery quote.
• Consolidate. The charge is per shipment, so two orders to the same household shipped together pay one residential charge instead of two.
• Negotiate or use a broker’s pricing. Shippers who deliver to homes every week can often get flat or reduced residential charges written into their agreement.

Why your contract price may differ from the tariff

The tariff figures above are what a carrier charges when no agreement says otherwise. Shipper contracts, pricing agreements and broker or 3PL carrier contracts frequently replace them with a flat residential fee, a lower minimum or a combined residential-and-liftgate charge. Anything the agreement doesn’t cover falls back to the tariff.

Armstrong customers ship on Armstrong Transport Group’s carrier pricing, so the residential and liftgate charges on a GetLTLRates quote may differ from the published numbers here. The quote shows what applies to your shipment. Use the tables as a benchmark to understand invoices and to see why two carriers’ home-delivery prices can be so far apart.

More on the related charges: liftgate fees by carrier, every common LTL accessorial explained, and what a pallet costs to ship.