Dense makes sense when Shipping

My wife received an ecommerce package recently and when she pulled out the contents I was dumbfounded…

The online merchant used a one metre rectangular tube to ship a 40cm product! You guessed it, the remaining 60cm was air inside the packaging tube. See video below….

Why does this matter I hear you ask?

If you have been selling online you may know that couriers/freight companies and Australia Post charge based on greater of the deadweight or cubic weight of your package.

Cubic weight is the charge by a carrier based on the items cubic volume or size. As an extreme example, if you think of a big box of feathers that weighs nothing but is huge in size, the carriers need to ensure they charge the correct amount to ship that large box otherwise they lose profit margins over the long term as their trucks or planes can’t transport as much product as they potentially could if most items were heavy and dense.

In a nutshell, the smaller and more dense a package is, generally the cheaper it will be to ship. For example, the one metre package in the video would cost an average courier customer around $15 to ship from Sydney to Melbourne.

If the merchant had of simply sent the 40cm black boxed product in a satchel or small box/parcel (that was essentially the same size as the product), it would have only cost around $12.

Small merchant – shipping 100 products per year = $300 saving.

Medium merchant – shipping 500 products per year = $1500 saving

Large merchant – shipping 4000 products per year = $12,000 saving

Be a smart sender, make your packages as dense and robust as possible. Don’t skimp on internal packaging though, as you may begin to increase your damage rates.

However, be sensible and source the correct shipping satchels/cartons for your products to save you big money in the long run.