There's no single answer — and be wary of anyone who gives you one
Any article promising you'll make exactly £X from a truckload is guessing. Profit depends on the load's condition mix, how well you sort and price it, which platforms you use, and how much time you put in. What we can give you is a realistic framework to work out your own numbers before you buy — and a sense of what genuinely successful resellers typically see.
Start with your real costs, not just the purchase price
The truckload price is only one part of your cost. Before working out potential profit, account for:
- Purchase price of the load itself
- Delivery or collection costs — confirm this upfront, it varies significantly by load
- Platform fees — eBay typically takes 10-13% of the sale price, Vinted takes a smaller cut, Facebook Marketplace is free for private sales
- Packaging and postage if you're not doing local collection-only sales
- Your time — genuinely worth estimating, even roughly, since sorting and listing 20+ pallets takes real hours
Skipping this step is the single biggest reason first-time resellers feel disappointed with a load that was actually fine — they only ever compared purchase price to sale price, not true cost to true return.
A worked example (illustrative, not a promise)
Say a general merchandise returns truckload costs £4,500 delivered, with an estimated retail (RRP) value of £25,000 across the load. That RRP figure is not what you'll realistically recover — treat it only as an upper ceiling.
A realistic recovery rate for mixed returns stock, sold properly across eBay, Facebook Marketplace and local options, tends to land somewhere in the 35-55% of RRP range once you account for items that sell fast, items that need heavy discounting, and a small percentage that won't sell at all and get bundled or scrapped.
On that example load, 35-55% of £25,000 RRP is roughly £8,750-£13,750 in total sales. After platform fees (call it 8-10% blended average across platforms) and packaging costs, that's a realistic gross return of somewhere in the £7,900-£12,500 range — against a £4,500 cost. That's the kind of margin that makes the time investment worthwhile, but it's a range, not a guarantee, and it assumes proper sorting, honest listings and consistent selling effort across several weeks.
What actually moves you toward the higher end of that range
- Sorting properly before listing (see our reselling guide) — wasted time on unsorted stock is the single biggest margin killer
- Using the right platform per item type rather than dumping everything on one
- Honest, well-photographed listings — these sell faster and get fewer returns/disputes
- Not being afraid to bundle or discount slow movers rather than let stock sit for months tying up cash
What drags you toward the lower end
- Buying a load with a condition mix you're not set up to handle (e.g. heavy electricals with no ability to test them)
- Listing everything at RRP-adjacent prices and letting stock sit
- Underestimating delivery/collection costs at the outset
- Treating it as a one-off rather than building repeat process — your second and third loads are almost always more profitable than your first, purely from experience
The honest bottom line
Most resellers we work with who treat this as a genuine, repeatable process — not a one-off gamble — see solid, sustainable margins over time. The first load is usually the least profitable simply because of the learning curve. If the numbers above look workable for your situation, browse our current programs below to find a load that fits your budget and the platforms you're set up to sell on.