In wireless mesh networks multi-rate technology environment, a mesh node can dynamically modify the data transmission rate on a particular link, in response to link distance, or more accurately, the perceived SNR ratio between neighbor nodes. In such networks, existing route selection schemes use a link quality metric. Thus, these schemes may easily result in the network being overloaded. In this paper, a new route metric is proposed; it considers both per-hop service delay and link quality at mesh nodes. In addition, the Load-Aware AODV (LA-AODV) protocol using the proposed metric is presented. The performance evaluation is performed by simulation using the OPNET simulator. It is demonstrated that the LA-AODV protocol outperforms the existing routing protocols using other existing route metrics in multi-rate WMN environment.