Freight class calculator
Enter the pallet dimensions and weight and it works out the density and the class off the current scale.
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NMFC Docket 2025-1
What changed in NMFC Docket 2025-1.
It took effect in July 2025. Roughly 2,000 listings were consolidated, and a large share of freight moved onto density-based classification. If you have been shipping on the same item number for years, this is the change that may have moved it out from under you.
What actually changed
The classification used to carry a very large number of separate listings, many of them describing a specific commodity at a fixed class. Docket 2025-1 was issued in January 2025, discussed at a public meeting that March, and took effect in July. It consolidated a great many of those listings into fewer, broader ones and moved much of that freight onto density.
In practice that means fewer commodities carry a class simply because of what they are. More of them now carry a class because of how much they weigh per cubic foot.
Why this matters even if your freight did not change
Your product is the same. Your packaging is the same. The number you have been putting on the bill of lading may not be.
If your commodity moved to a density-based listing, its class is now worked out from the dimensions and weight of the pallet as it ships. Two shipments of the same product can classify differently if one is stacked tighter than the other.
That is a real change in how you have to think about it. A fixed class you could memorize has become a number that depends on how the pallet is built that day.
The density scale
Density-based items rate off a scale of 13 subprovisions, running from the densest freight at the low classes to the lightest and bulkiest at the high ones. Work out pounds per cubic foot and the scale tells you where the shipment lands.
Two things worth keeping to hand:
The 13-sub density chart
Every subprovision and class break on one page, for keeping by the scale on the dock.
Get the chart →How to tell whether yours moved
There is no free public directory to check against, and reading the classification takes access and practice. What you can do without either:
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Gather the item numbers you actually ship on
From previous bills of lading, your carrier's rating tool, or your rate agreement. Most shippers have fewer than ten that matter.
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Watch for reclassifications since July 2025
That is when the changes took effect. If invoices started coming back adjusted after then on a commodity that had been stable for years, that is the signal. One reclassification on a repeat lane is worth checking properly rather than absorbing.
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Have them checked against the current classification
This is the part that needs the subscription. Send us up to 10 and we will tell you which are still current, which moved, and which look wrong for what you are shipping.
What it costs to find out late
A wrong item number does not usually announce itself. The freight moves, the invoice looks normal, and nothing happens until a carrier inspects one shipment and reclassifies it.
By then the same number has been on every bill of lading for that commodity, and the correction is difficult to argue with, because the carrier inspected the freight and you did not.
We will check yours at no charge. Send up to 10 of the item numbers you ship on and we will tell you which are still current and which moved under Docket 2025-1. No account, no obligation.
Seeing reclassifications you did not used to see?
Send us a lane and what is moving on it. We will tell you whether the classification is the problem, and what it should be.