Pricing · Hamilton depot
Freight pricing
in plain dollars
Our whole freight pricing sheet fits on this one page — every service, every starting rate in AUD, and every surcharge that could ever reach your invoice. Four minutes of reading. Then one form and a written number back inside a business day.
The first number we give you is the number on the invoice.
A lot of freight quoting in this country runs on mystery. A rate comes back, everyone nods, then the fuel levy shows up, then a tail-lift fee nobody mentioned, then a residential surcharge that doubles the job. We got tired of watching customers brace for the bill, so our freight pricing lives out in the open — the same figures that sit on the dispatch office wall, checked against this quarter's rate card.
If your job doesn't fit a line on this page, we still quote it — per job, itemised, with the reason for every line on it. What we don't do is round numbers out of thin air and fix them later.
How we still do it
invoice,
or we call
first
The dispatch wall
All six services, all starting rates
Tap a service for the full page — inclusions, coverage and how billing works on that lane.
| Service | What it covers | From | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interstate freight | Nightly linehaul Brisbane–Sydney–Melbourne and back, FTL & LTL, tracked door to door. | $1.85per km per pallet · ≈$165/pallet BNE→SYD | Details |
| Metro & last-mile delivery | Scheduled runs across Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Ipswich, with call-ahead. | $38per delivery, metro | Details |
| Warehousing & storage | Racked storage in Hamilton with pick-pack, cross-dock and container unpack on site. | $14per pallet / week · pick-pack from $2.20/carton | Details |
| Palletised distribution | Bulk freight in, broken down and sent out — retail, wholesale or direct to customer. | $22per pallet out | Details |
| Express courier | Hotshot runs and same-day metro work — one vehicle, direct drive, dispatch inside the hour. | $55metro minimum | Details |
| Freight management | We run your whole freight function — carriers, rates, claims — and report to you weekly. | $490per month, retainer | Details |
All figures on this page are in Australian dollars, ex GST. Your quote and your invoice both show the GST line separately so the bookkeeper stays happy.
What moves your freight pricing up or down
Distance first, obviously — but lane matters as much as kilometres. A pallet to Sydney rides a truck we fill every single night, so it's cheap per space. That same pallet to a regional town waits for a weekly run or a dedicated leg, and the number climbs. We did the full maths on Queensland lanes in this blog post if you want the long version.
Then comes the old freight trick: we bill the greater of actual weight and cubic weight. One cubic metre counts as 333 kg on road freight. A pallet of doonas measures the same as a pallet of bricks — feathers bill by the cube, bricks bill by the scale. A standard pallet for us is 1165 mm square, up to 1.8 m high and 1,200 kg; anything over that gets quoted as oversize before the truck's booked, never after.
Urgency costs too. Freight booked by the 3pm cut-off rides tonight's schedule at the standard rate. Same-day, after-hours and Saturday work carries a 25% uplift because a driver and a vehicle get pulled off plan for it.
Weighed & measured
The extras list — all of it
These are the only surcharges we charge. If it's not on this list, it doesn't appear on your invoice.
| Tail-lift truck, when neither end has a dock or forklift | +$15per delivery |
| Residential or non-commercial address | +$18per delivery |
| Hand unload or driver assist | +$35from, per job |
| Two-person crew — stairs, awkward or 30 kg+ items | +$85per hour |
| Waiting past the first free 15 minutes | $1.80per minute |
| Second attempt after a failed drop | 1×the delivery rate |
| Fuel levy — floats with the diesel index, its own line every time | 10–16%last 12 months |
Three packs our regulars actually buy
Bundled work bills cheaper than booking each piece separately. These three cover most requests.
Startup 3PL pack
Storage + pick-pack + metro distribution, for brands outgrowing the garage.
- Up to 8 pallet spaces in the Hamilton warehouse
- Receiving and putaway included
- Pick-pack up to 60 cartons a month
- One scheduled metro distribution run weekly
- Monthly stock report, counted by us
Regular linehaul
Commit one pallet a week on a set lane and the rate drops and stays dropped.
- A set pallet each week on your lane — BNE↔SYD is the usual
- Rate locked for six months
- Priority loading on the nightly departure
- One invoice at month end
Overflow cover
Peak-season insurance: a buffer of space plus a courier slot on call.
- Two standing pallet spaces at the depot
- On-call express slot when a run falls over
- Cross-dock inside four hours on booked days
- Scale up or down with a week's notice
What a real quote looks like
Rate cards look tidy; real jobs rarely are. So here are three recent shapes of invoice — rounded, but built from the rates above, line by line the same way yours would be.
Invoice day
2 pallets, Brisbane → Sydney
Packaged food cartons, loading docks at both ends, booked Tuesday for a Thursday window. Two pallets at $165 each plus that week's fuel levy — invoice came to $376 all up.
Homewares label, monthly 3PL
Five pallets stored, around 120 pick-pack cartons, two metro drops a week. The combined bill last month ran $848 — less than the part-time storeman they'd been pricing.
Friday arvo machine part
Ute, direct drive from a Brisbane workshop to a Gold Coast plant, ninety minutes notice. $235 door to door — dear per kilometre, cheap next to a production line sitting idle.
How a quote gets to you
No portal, no pricing calculator that guesses wrong. A person reads your job and sends a number.
inside a
business day
You describe the job
What it is, the rough dimensions and weight, where it's going, when it has to be there. A photo of awkward freight answers most of our questions before we ask them.
We send one number, itemised
Rate, levy, any accessorials — each on its own line so you can see the shape of it. The quote holds for 14 days, and if a cheaper carrier suits the job better we'll say that too.
The invoice matches the quote
If something changes mid-job, you hear about it before the truck moves — with the option to say no. Anything we missed on our side, we wear.
Asked across the counter
The six things everyone wants to know before they hand freight over.
Booking this week's runs
Got a load that needs
a number on it?
Send the details through and we come back with real freight pricing on your actual freight — itemised, in writing, inside a business day. Prefer a voice? Ring dispatch on +61 7 3154 8823, Mon–Fri 6:30–17:30.