or: “why does the shipping cost more than the product ?!?!?“
Which is a great question, and is not just because of the petroleum price jump. Shipping costs have been rising at an accelerating pace over the past decade. It used to be that those prices were relatively stable, and would increase by maybe 1% each year. Now, transportation prices increase weekly.
Why? Three simple reasons.
1] ever increasing cost of the modes of transportation – buying the trucks, ships, planes, and paying the people to operate them.
2] cost of fuel. When I started this business, diesel fuel was about 60¢ a gallon. This week it’s around $6 a gallon. This increase affects the costs of everything we encounter daily, as nearly every item has to be transported by truck at some stage.
3] pressure from e-commerce. Suddenly everyone wants to shop from home and have things delivered. That puts price pressure on all forms of shipping.
Notice from UPS: “Effective March 26, 2020, and until further notice, we have suspended the UPS Service Guarantee (also known as the UPS Money Back Guarantee) for all shipments from any origin to any destination”
[Don’t let that scare you. UPS is still the most reliable shipping company with the best on-time delivery record.]
“But shipping is free for purchases in the US, isn’t it?” (I actually get this question a lot)
No. Google and Amazon can offer that because they 1) pay only a portion of the regular rate, 2) they make merchants pay a bunch of fees for each item that goes through their system, and 3) the merchants roll the shipping fee into the cost of the items. That’s how it’s “free”. (By contrast, shipping constitutes one-third of my operating costs!)
“To return stuff, can I just go to a place that can package and ship for me?”
Well, you can, but they charge a lot for their service, far above the actual shipping charge. The box, the tape, the packing material – those are sold to you at premium prices, as is the act of wrapping, inserting and taping. The more you do yourself, the cheaper the outcome.
On rental orders, you may request a pre-paid peel-and-stick UPS return label at the time the order is placed. Each label is only good for one container, which must match the size and weight of the original shipment. Just put the return label over the original label, seal the box, and drop it off at any location that accepts UPS shipment. The charge will appear as a line item on your rental invoice. (And, in case you were wondering, my rates are a little lower than what you’d have to pay at a UPS store.)
Very light shipments (under four pounds) are sometimes mailed using the US Postal Service. But I use UPS for everything else. The company has a superb tracking system and exceptional reliability. (UPS and FedEx prices are usually very close, and both use variations of the same rules.)
As you may already know, UPS sets its prices by three factors: 1) weight 2) container size and 3) distance traveled. The following explains why I don’t know what your shipping will cost until I finish boxing up your order:
- the weight of the box:
That’s easy: the more it weighs the more they charge. But not every pound is equal. The first pound costs a lot, each additional pound costs less. So it’s much cheaper to send out one 12 pound box than two 6 pound boxes. If at all possible I will try to save you money by shipping out fewer, heavier boxes rather than a bunch of light boxes. - the size of the box:
UPS and FedEX (and even USPS to a lesser degree) have something called “dimensional weight”. They don’t want to ship a lot of empty air, so the volume of the box is calculated into the price. If you ship a one pound dagger in a box that is 36″ by 10″ by 10″, the dimensional weight kicks in and they will charge you as though it were 32 pounds.
And simple length is also a factor: anything over 48″ can’t travel on every automatic conveyor belt, so an “oversize” dimensional weight calculation kicks in, as well as a few additional handling fees. - the distance that it has to travel:
And that is more than just how many miles it has to go. It’s also how many distribution hubs it has to pass through, i.e. how many times it has to change hands. And crazy at it seems, shipping from point A to point B is rarely the same cost as shipping from point B to point A.
But that’s just for starters. Additional charges are added for residential deliveries and for “remote” destinations. - cost of fuel:
As fuel prices change, shipping companies modify their commercial rates accordingly. They used to do that once every two or three years. Now they do it daily.
And so far we are only talking about standard ground service. There are also “3-day”, “2-day”, and “next-day” services, and several sub-categories of each.
“Do you ship internationally?”
I used to, but no more. I no longer ship to any location outside of the United States, and by United States I mean only the fifty states. Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, etc. require special shipping and import requirements that are too much for me.