Kentucky LTL Freight Rates & Quotes

Shipping LTL freight to or from Kentucky? Rates depend on your specific route, freight class, and how close your pickup or delivery point is to the nearest LTL terminal. Kentucky is a small state with an outsized freight footprint. Louisville’s airport handled about 3.4 million metric tons of cargo in 2025, fourth in the world according to preliminary Airports Council International data, because it is home to UPS Worldport. Across the river from Cincinnati, Amazon Air runs its primary U.S. hub out of the Northern Kentucky airport, and Kentucky exported a record $50.6 billion of goods in 2025. I-64, I-65, I-71, I-75 and I-24 all cross the state, which has about 4.6 million residents. Here’s what actually affects your rate.

LTL trucking regulations in Kentucky

A standard LTL tractor-trailer is legal in Kentucky without a permit. Permits matter for freight that exceeds legal width, height or weight, and Kentucky has a few rules that other states do not:

• Permits come from the Division of Motor Carriers. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet issues overweight and overdimensional permits through its online DRIVE portal. A load wider than 8 ft 6 in or taller than 13 ft 6 in needs one.
• A single-trip permit costs $60 and is valid for 10 days. The Cabinet adds a 4% service fee for credit cards or a $3 fee for ACH payment. Annual permits for non-divisible loads cost $250 (under 14 ft wide) or $500 (14 to 16 ft wide).
• Oversize loads can move around the clock. Except for mobile homes, permitted loads may travel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and Kentucky has no holiday restrictions unless the permit says otherwise.
• The big metros are off limits at rush hour. No overweight or overdimensional load may move in Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Fayette or Jefferson County, or on the KY 2155 bridge at Owensboro, from 7 to 9 a.m. or 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. That covers Northern Kentucky, Lexington and Louisville.
• Carriers pay a weight-distance tax. Kentucky’s KYU license applies to vehicles with a combined license weight over 59,999 lbs, at $0.0285 per mile, filed quarterly. It is a carrier tax; shippers do not file it.
• Tolls are limited to three Louisville bridges. The I-65 Abraham Lincoln and Kennedy bridges and the Lewis and Clark Bridge (SR 265/KY 841) over the Ohio River charge $15.51 to a 5-axle truck with a RiverLink transponder and $16.01 by plate, as of July 1, 2025, with rates rising at least 2.5% a year. Kentucky’s parkways have been toll-free since 2006.
• Coal trucks get extra weight on designated roads. Kentucky’s extended-weight coal haul system allows coal and coal by-product trucks up to 120,000 lbs on designated routes.

Current permit fees and forms are public record:

Kentucky DRIVE Overweight/Overdimensional Permits →

What affects your Kentucky LTL rate

• Freight class — density, handling, and liability determine your NMFC class, the single biggest factor in your rate. See our freight class guide.
• Distance — Kentucky is long and narrow, and I-64 alone runs about 190 miles across it, so even an in-state lane can mean several hours on the road.
• Which side of the river — pickups and deliveries in the Louisville and Cincinnati metro areas often involve Indiana or Ohio terminals as well as Kentucky ones, so quotes for those addresses can differ from the same distance elsewhere.
• Terminal proximity — the more carrier terminals near your pickup or delivery point, the more quotes you see. Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky are well served; the eastern Kentucky mountains and rural counties typically see fewer options.
• Accessorials — liftgate, residential, or inside delivery add to the base rate, same as anywhere else.

Did you know?From 6 real Kentucky lanes and 30 quotes

1. 8× the cost per mile

   The shorter haul cost far more per mile

   A 500 lb shipment moving 435 miles (Erlanger, KY to McConnell, IL) had a lowest quote of $595, or $1.37 a mile. A 250 lb shipment moving 2,344 miles (Hickory, KY to Coos Bay, OR) had a lowest quote of $425, or $0.18 a mile.

2. $231 to arrive 2 days sooner

   Speed has a price

   On Erlanger, KY to McConnell, IL (435 miles, 500 lb), the cheapest quote at $595 took 4 days. The fastest, at 2 days, cost $827. On Bowling Green, KY to Tampa, FL, 2-day delivery cost $564 against $433 for 3 days.

3. 5 carriers had the lowest quote

   Five different carriers won six Kentucky lanes

   ABF Freight had the lowest quote on two lanes. Old Dominion, Pitt Ohio, Southeastern, and TForce Freight each had the lowest quote on one lane. Across the lowest quotes on every lane, 13 different carriers appeared.

4. $249 from lowest to fifth-lowest

   Same shipment, quotes $249 apart

   For 500 lb from Erlanger, KY to McConnell, IL (435 miles), the lowest quote was $595 and the fifth-lowest was $844, a 42% gap.

Get quotes for your lane →

Where freight moves in Kentucky

Kentucky’s freight geography revolves around a few hubs:

• Louisville — the UPS Worldport air hub, the Louisville Riverport on the Ohio River, two Ford assembly plants, and the junction of I-64, I-65 and I-71.
• Northern Kentucky & Cincinnati — Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, where Amazon Air and DHL operate, and the Brent Spence Bridge carrying I-71 and I-75 across the Ohio River.
• Lexington & the Bluegrass — Toyota’s Georgetown plant on I-75, near much of the state’s bourbon country.
• Bowling Green & south-central Kentucky — the home of the Chevrolet Corvette plant, on I-65.
• Western Kentucky — Paducah and Owensboro, along the Ohio River and the Western Kentucky Parkway.
• Eastern Kentucky — mountain country where roads follow river valleys.

Weather and transit reliability

Kentucky’s weather hazards range from tornadoes to floods to snow. On December 10, 2021, an EF4 tornado tracked 165.7 miles across western Kentucky through Mayfield and Dawson Springs, with peak winds of 190 mph and 57 deaths, according to the National Weather Service; the NWS calls it the deadliest December tornado in U.S. history. In late July 2022, flooding in the eastern Kentucky mountains put more than 10 inches of rain on parts of the region and sent the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Jackson to a record crest of 43.47 feet, breaking a record set in 1939; at least 38 people died and roads were shut across the valleys. Winter storms close highways too: during a late-January 2026 storm the National Weather Service recorded 8.2 inches of snow and sleet in Paducah, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet crews logged 741,000 plow miles, and a crash involving a commercial truck and a plow blocked the eastbound Western Kentucky Parkway in Grayson County. For LTL shippers the practical advice is simple: during severe weather, build extra transit time into anything headed to or through the affected area.

Sample Kentucky LTL rates by route

Real quotes pulled from our platform for six different Kentucky lanes — same process, different carriers each time, spanning a huge range of weights and distances. Rates shift with capacity and fuel costs, so treat these as a snapshot rather than a guarantee for your shipment; get an instant quote for your exact route.

Rate, transit, and price-per-mile summary

Pulling the six lanes above together, price per mile falls steeply as the haul gets longer:

Route	Distance	Weight	Price range	Transit range	Price per mile
Morristown, TN → Mount Sterling, KY	189 mi	25 lb	$255–$304	1 day	$1.35–$1.61
Erlanger, KY → McConnell, IL	435 mi	500 lb	$595–$844	2–4 days	$1.37–$1.94
Pikeville, KY → West Deptford, NJ	565 mi	327 lb	$269–$348	1–3 days	$0.48–$0.62
Bowling Green, KY → Tampa, FL	759 mi	24 lb	$433–$637	2–3 days	$0.57–$0.84
Louisville, KY → Big Piney, WY	1,504 mi	700 lb	$503–$632	5–9 days	$0.33–$0.42
Hickory, KY → Coos Bay, OR	2,344 mi	250 lb	$425–$499	5–8 days	$0.18–$0.21

Price per mile spans about a tenfold range in this data, from $0.18–$0.21 on the 2,344-mile haul from Hickory, Kentucky to Coos Bay, Oregon to $1.37–$1.94 on the 435-mile, 500 lb lane from Erlanger to McConnell, Illinois. Distance does most of the work, and the two lightest shipments show it clearly: 25 lb from Morristown, Tennessee to Mount Sterling and 24 lb from Bowling Green to Tampa. The Tampa lane is four times as long (759 miles against 189) yet costs only about 1.7 to 2.1 times as much ($433–$637 against $255–$304), so the short hop is the expensive one per mile ($1.35–$1.61 against $0.57–$0.84). Carrier spread matters as much as mileage. On Erlanger to McConnell, ABF Freight quoted $595.33 while the next-lowest quote, from Moran, was $826.76, about 39% higher. On Bowling Green to Tampa, ABF was again lowest at $433.05, with Estes next at $563.79, about 30% higher. In both cases ABF’s transit was the slowest or tied for slowest, three or four days against two for most of its competitors, so the saving comes with a trade-off. That is not always so: on Louisville to Big Piney, Wyoming, the lowest quote (Old Dominion, $502.90) was also the fastest at 5 days, in a field running from 5 to 9 days, and on Pikeville to West Deptford, New Jersey, Pitt Ohio’s $268.82 was both the lowest quote and the only 1-day option. The lesson is the same on every lane: compare several carriers before you book.

Major shipping hubs in Kentucky

Kentucky’s freight moves through two air-cargo giants, a river port and a manufacturing belt:

• Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (UPS Worldport) — about 3.4 million metric tons of cargo in 2025, nearly 7.5 billion pounds, which preliminary Airports Council International data rank fourth in the world.
• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) — in Hebron, Kentucky, home to Amazon Air’s $1.5 billion, 800,000-square-foot hub, plus DHL operations and a newer general air freight facility at its Global Logistics Park.
• Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (Georgetown) — described as Toyota’s largest manufacturing facility in the world; Toyota announced an additional $800 million investment there in March 2026.
• Ford in Louisville — two Ford assembly plants in the city, alongside the Chevrolet Corvette plant in Bowling Green.
• Louisville Riverport — a port on the Ohio River for barge freight.

Highway corridors serving Kentucky

I-75 (about 192 miles in Kentucky) runs north-south through Lexington and Northern Kentucky, and I-64 (about 191 miles) crosses the state east-west through Louisville and Lexington. I-65 (about 137 miles) connects Nashville, Bowling Green and Louisville, while I-71 (about 96 miles) links Louisville to Cincinnati and I-24 (about 94 miles) serves the Paducah area in the west. Louisville is where I-64, I-65 and I-71 meet, and the Ohio River crossings there are the state’s only tolled roads.

Cincinnati and the Brent Spence Bridge

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) ranks the I-71 and I-75 interchange at Cincinnati ninth on its 2026 list of the Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks, based on 2025 data. That interchange sits at the Kentucky end of the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries both interstates across the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington. A companion bridge is under construction: Kentucky’s governor announced groundbreaking for spring 2026, with the first portion of the corridor project costing $4.05 billion and the new bridge expected to open in 2031. The figures cover all trucks, not just LTL, but they explain why Northern Kentucky deliveries are scheduled around Cincinnati traffic.

What Kentucky shippers move

Kentucky’s export economy is dominated by aerospace and manufacturing. The governor’s office reported record exports of $50.6 billion in 2025, led by about $23 billion of aerospace products and parts, $5.7 billion of industrial machinery, $4.6 billion of motor vehicles and parts, and $3.6 billion of pharmaceuticals. Canada was the top destination at $8.3 billion. Kentucky is also the home of bourbon: the Kentucky Distillers’ Association says 95% of the world’s bourbon is made in the state, and its January 2025 inventory counted a record 16.1 million barrels aging in Kentucky warehouses. Much of this freight is moved by full truckload or air, but the suppliers, parts and finished goods around it are exactly where LTL fits.

Kentucky LTL freight: frequently asked questions

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