A method and device providing that the corners of a respective laundry item are transferred one by one from a conveyor to spreading clamps of a pair of spreading clamps at the same position in each case. The respective conveyor therefore only requires a single circulatory track. Laundry items in commercial laundries are fed by at least one conveyor to spreading clamps of an input machine. In this case, each corner delimiting a front edge of the laundry item is held by a clamp of the conveyor. The respective conveyor is usually branched, in order for the corners to be transferred at the same time to the two spreading clamps of a pair of spreading clamps. Thus, the respective conveyor must have a branched track system with appropriate switches.