91% of Truck Packer's Paying Customers Move Shows. Here's Who Else Packs With It

91% of the workspaces paying for Truck Packer move live events: crew members packing their own tours, rental and production shops, and touring companies. I know that because in September we went through every paying workspace by hand and labeled what it does. About 4% pack something other than a show, like church gear, freight, museum pieces, a household move or a trade show booth, and the last 4% we couldn't place.

I'm writing this because I've spent the last month publishing comparisons against freight and warehouse load planners, and it's fair to ask who this thing is actually for. The honest answer is that it's built by touring people for touring loads, and it packs anything that ships in a box.

91% of our paying workspaces move live events

Source: Truck Packer, a hand-labeled review of every paying workspace, September 2026

The biggest group is individual crew members at 45%: production managers, techs and engineers who pay for their own account and pack their own tour. Next is AV, backline rental and production vendors at 27%, then touring and production companies at 19%, which covers artist entities, PM firms, SFX and scenic shops. Crew members are also how a lot of shops find us, because a freelancer uses it on one tour and brings it to the next one. Rental and production shops hold the biggest share of our multi-seat Business accounts. That lines up with where I come from: I'm a front-of-house engineer, and I built Truck Packer with David after years of planning trailer packs in Excel, Vectorworks, SketchUp and chalk on the dock floor.

About 4% pack something other than a show

Source: Truck Packer, a hand-labeled review of every paying workspace, September 2026

The rest is small, but it's real. There are churches, a few freight, logistics and industrial shops, museums and commercial install companies, a household mover and a trade show exhibit shop. Their loads look different and so do their asks: liftgates, straight trucks and pups, dual-temperature reefers, lower gross weight caps, and weight and balance on every trailer. Some of that is on our list for touring anyway, and some of it isn't.

A tour truck fills 48.5 ft at 20,720 lb, and a pallet truck fills 52 ft at 36,400 lb

Source: Truck Packer load plan, two 53 ft dry vans built for this post

To show the difference, I built both in one pack, and here it is. The tour truck is 88 cases: chain motors at the nose, then moving lights, amp racks, line array carts, subs, cable trunks, guitar vaults and two consoles at the tail. It fills 48.5 ft of floor and weighs 20,720 lb, which is 46% of a 45,000 lb payload. Tour trucks almost always run out of room long before they run out of weight, and the whole game is stacking like on like and loading so the first thing the venue needs comes off first.

The tour truck: 88 cases in departments from nose to tail, stacked two and three high where they stack like on like.

The warehouse truck is 26 standard 48x40 pallets, two across and 13 deep, which is the usual count for a 53 ft trailer loaded straight. It fills 52 ft of floor and weighs 36,400 lb, 81% of the payload. Nothing stacks, every position is the same size, and the questions are weight per axle and drop order, not which case rides on which.

The warehouse truck: 26 pallets, two across and 13 deep, at 81% of the trailer's payload.

Both trucks take the same 4 steps in the app

Source: Truck Packer, Changelog

In Truck Packer, both of those loads are the same job. You import the list from a spreadsheet, pick the trailer from about 83 presets, AutoPack it or drag it, and send the crew a link that opens on any phone with no account. Since v0.10.2 every truck also gets a QR code for the dock. The difference is in the rules, and that's where I want to be straight with freight people: AutoPack doesn't take stack limits or drop order yet, and axle and kingpin weights are still in progress. A lot of freight planners have those today, which is why I wrote up 18 alternatives and where each one beats us.

We're building for the 91% first, and the rest is welcome

Source: Truck Packer, Roadmap

The roadmap follows the people paying for it. Stacking rules for AutoPack are on it, and axle weights are in progress, and the good news for the other 9% is that both help a pallet truck as much as a tour truck. If you pack freight, a church rig or a trade show booth and the app is missing something you need, email me at michael@backlinelogic.com and tell me what it is.

Got a load to plan this week, show or not? Log in to Truck Packer and pack it.