Freight with Estes
Connect your Estes account, track Estes and EFW shipments, and see which orders Parcello ships as LTL freight and how it describes them.
Updated October 23, 2026
Parcello works with Estes for LTL freight on your own Estes account. Connecting Estes gives you live tracking on every plan. Freight quotes at checkout, bills of lading and freight pickups are on the Freight plan.
On the Freight plan, Parcello also works with FedEx Freight. See Freight with FedEx Freight.
Before you start
- A MyEstes login (username and password) and your Estes account number.
- Boxes with real dimensions and weights for anything that ships freight. Estes prices and classes freight from them.
- For rates at checkout, a Shopify plan that allows third-party calculated shipping rates. See Live rates at checkout.
Connect Estes
- Go to Carriers and open the Estes card.
- Enter your MyEstes username, MyEstes password and Account number.
- Under Shipment update emails, choose who gets Estes’ movement emails (see below).
- Click Connect. The card shows Connected.
To change a setting later, edit the card and click Update. Leave the password blank to keep the one on file. Disconnect removes the connection.
When you connect, or change the username or password, Parcello checks the login with Estes before saving it. If Estes refuses it, the card says “Estes didn’t accept that username and password.” and nothing is saved. “Couldn’t reach Estes. Try again.” means Estes didn’t answer. Saving the card’s other settings doesn’t check the login again.
The account number is needed for quotes and bills of lading, not for tracking.
Shipment update emails
Estes sends movement emails to the addresses on the bill of lading. It has no choice of events, so each recipient is simply on or off. Both start off.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Send the customer Estes’ shipment updates | Adds the customer’s email to new bills of lading. |
| Your email | Adds your address to new bills of lading. Blank means you get none. |
Each Estes shipment has its own Notifications section that starts from these defaults. See Bills of lading and Estes pickups.
Freight plan settings
On the Freight plan the Estes card also has:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Add full-value coverage to new BOLs | Off by default. When on, new Estes shipments buy Estes full-value coverage for their declared value. Off means Estes’ standard liability applies. |
| Checkout rates | Which Estes services and delivery options checkout quotes. |
The settings every freight carrier shares are on the Freight card under Default Carrier on the Carriers page:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Consolidate parcel items onto a freight shipment | When an order has a freight shipment, parcel items from the same location ride it too, both at checkout and when the order is labeled. Saves as soon as you tick or untick it. |
| BOL special instructions | Standing text printed on every bill of lading. You can edit it per shipment. Up to 500 characters. |
| Pickup ready from / Pickup ready to | Your default pickup window, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM until you change it. Printed on every bill of lading and prefilled when you book a pickup. |
Click Save on the Freight card after changing the instructions or the window.
Which shipments ship freight
On the Freight plan, with Estes connected, Parcello puts a product on an Estes shipment when either is true:
- its carrier on the Products page is Estes (LTL freight), or
- one of its boxes is too big or too heavy for parcel carriers: longer than 108 inches, more than 165 inches in length plus girth, or over 150 lb with its contents.
With automatic packing, the product’s own size decides instead of its box rows.
This happens when the order’s shipments are created, and again when you use Recalculate Packages on the order (available while none of its shipments has a label). On a shipment inside the United States you can also pick Estes in the shipment’s carrier list yourself. Estes bills of lading are for US-to-US shipments only.
When FedEx Freight is set up too, each order uses one freight carrier for all of its freight. See Which freight carrier an order uses.
Consolidating parcel items
With Consolidate parcel items onto a freight shipment on (on the Freight card), an order with freight from a location sends that location’s parcel items on the same Estes shipment. Their boxes become extra pieces on the bill of lading. Checkout prices the cart the same way, so the customer pays for one freight shipment.
Example: Order #1001 has a crate that ships freight and two small boxes from the same warehouse. With the setting on, one Estes shipment carries three pieces. With it off, the crate ships freight and the two boxes ship parcel.
How Parcello describes freight to Estes
Box orientation
Each box is declared standing on its smallest face: height is the longest side, length the middle one, width the shortest. A box longer than 105 inches can’t stand in a trailer, so it is declared lying down. The quote and the bill of lading use the same rule.
Example: a 96 × 96 × 8 inch crate is declared as 96 × 8 × 96 (length × width × height). Standing, it takes less trailer floor, which can let guaranteed service quote.
Freight class
Estes needs a freight class on every piece. Parcello sets it from each box’s density (weight divided by cubic feet) on the NMFTA density scale:
| Density (lb per cubic foot) | Class |
|---|---|
| 50 or more | 50 |
| 35 to under 50 | 55 |
| 30 to under 35 | 60 |
| 22.5 to under 30 | 65 |
| 15 to under 22.5 | 70 |
| 12 to under 15 | 85 |
| 10 to under 12 | 92.5 |
| 8 to under 10 | 100 |
| 6 to under 8 | 125 |
| 4 to under 6 | 175 |
| 2 to under 4 | 250 |
| 1 to under 2 | 300 |
| under 1 | 400 |
Example: a 48 × 40 × 40 inch box weighing 400 lb is 44.4 cubic feet, about 9 lb per cubic foot, so class 100.
Freight at checkout
On the Freight plan, with Estes connected and Surface at checkout ticked in the Estes card’s Checkout rates section, carts with freight items get Estes quotes when Estes is the cart’s freight carrier. You choose:
- the Service levels to show (Estes LTL Standard is on by default; Estes Guaranteed by 5 PM and Estes Guaranteed by Noon are off),
- your surcharge and whether to Add full-value coverage,
- the Delivery accessorials folded into every quote (Residential delivery and Liftgate at delivery are on by default),
- Backup service levels, quoted only when none of your chosen services returns a rate.
Estes quotes destinations in the United States (Puerto Rico included), Canada and Mexico. Canada needs the city. See Choose carriers and services for checkout and How checkout prices a cart.
Tracking Estes and EFW
- Estes: with Estes connected (any plan), Parcello looks up Estes PRO numbers itself, including shipments fulfilled outside Parcello. Without a connection, Estes shipments follow Shopify’s own fulfillment tracking.
- EFW (Estes Forwarding Worldwide): recognized from the fulfillment’s tracking company or link, and tracked without any connection.
Statuses show on the Tracking page. See The Tracking page.
Notes and limits
- Estes doesn’t validate addresses. Parcello uses the address as entered on the bill of lading.
- Estes shipments have no Signature required checkbox (freight is signed for at delivery) and no return labels.
- Checkout’s Estes settings are separate from the bill of lading defaults: the checkout coverage choice follows the Estes checkout column, not Add full-value coverage to new BOLs.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking shows “Connect Estes on the Carriers page to track this shipment.” | Estes isn’t connected and Shopify has no tracking for the PRO. | Connect Estes on Carriers. |
| A quote fails with “Estes account number not configured”. | The Account number field is empty. | Add it on the Estes card and click Update. |
| Checkout shows no Estes rate for a Canadian address. | “Estes needs the destination city to quote Canada.” | The rate appears once the shopper enters a city. |
| A freight product ships parcel. | Its carrier isn’t a freight carrier and its boxes fit parcel limits, or Estes isn’t connected. | Set the product’s carrier to Estes (LTL freight) on Products, then use Recalculate Packages on the order. |