A less-than-container-load shipment is one too small to justify its own box, consolidated with other shippers’ cargo into a shared container and split again at destination. Nothing defines the threshold at which a consignment becomes one or the other: consolidators set their own minimum chargeable volumes and their own conversion between weight and measurement, so identical cargo can be quoted either way by two providers. The charges that matter here — consolidation, deconsolidation, handling at the container freight station, documentation — sit outside the ocean freight rate and vary by port and operator. With no authority over the term, the only reliable comparison prices the whole door-to-door movement, including terminal charges at both ends.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists and says so plainly where none does. This term is market convention: it was coined by commercial practice, it is used by everyone in the trade, and no body defines it. Pointing at a carrier’s tariff, a bank’s product page or a trade association’s explainer would dress one participant’s usage as a general rule. The practical upshot runs through the paragraph above — where the word carries no fixed meaning, the contract has to supply one.