Growing the Worth of Your Waste
How an FV trailer gets loaded to hit the magic number — 40,000 lbs per outbound — without sacrificing safety.
Scroll to walk through the pattern.
Standard 53-foot dry van — 100" interior width, 110" interior height, 13'6" overall. About ~4,050 ft³ of cargo space and a 42,000–45,000 lb max payload. Every inch and every pound counts when you're chasing the limit.
Each compressed cardboard bale runs 700–900 lbs depending on moisture and grade. The 30" side sits floor-to-bale, so each three-high stack rises roughly 90" inside the trailer.
Bales are loaded two across the trailer floor and stacked three high, with the long 60" side parallel to the trailer. That orientation locks the rows together and uses every inch of the deck.
Volume says 58 bales can fit. Weight says heavier bales tap out sooner — at 900 lbs each, the load maxes out around 50 bales. Either way, a real-world trailer leaves the yard with somewhere between 40,000 and 45,000 lbs of cardboard, right up against the legal limit.
The row closest to the rear doors gets stacked only two high. When the doors swing open at the mill, nothing tumbles out — a small concession that keeps people and product safe.
Maximize weight per truck → fewer trips, lower freight cost, more cardboard back to the mill.