Almost all U.S. LTL carriers use NMFC freight classes, although some are attempting to move to a dimensionally-based system.

It might be tempting to declare that your shipment is a lower freight class than it actually is in order to secure a lower price, however, carriers will re-classify your freight for accuracy and charge you a fee for having to do so.

No. While density is one of the primary factors in determining NMFC freight class, other factors, such as value, are also used in making that determination. Gold bars, for example, are very dense, but they fall into shipping class 500 along with very low-density items because of their high value.