Loading meter (LDM) in road freight

The loading meter, written LDM, is the billing unit of European road groupage: one meter of trailer length occupied across the full loading width. It is computed as the piece length multiplied by its width and divided by 2.4, with one dimension rounded up to a standard step, and a standard curtainsider offers 13.6 loading meters.

No instrument defines the loading meter. It is a tariff convention, and the conversion from loading meters to a billing weight is a table published per country by each carrier, so the same pallet converts differently for continental, Nordic and domestic traffic. The conversion is also conditional rather than automatic, triggered by non-stackable or overhanging freight, by height, length or piece weight thresholds, and by any load requiring full-width securing.

The full article will cover the computation and its rounding steps, the published per-country conversions with their dates, the trigger conditions, how the loading meter interacts with pallet-space and cubic billing, and the EU maximum weights and dimensions regime that caps what a combination may carry. The mode comparison sits in CBM and chargeable weight .