How UPS & FedEx Calculates Shipping Costs

Since you’re reading this article, we figure you have been to the checkout page and been turned off by the high shipping costs.

Below is an explanation of how your shipping charges are more than you expected. We are a small business and we are not able to get the massive shipping discounts like the giant online retailers. We are not looking to profit from shipping but it is not worth selling products at a loss because of additional packaging, surcharges and breakage due to rough delivery handlers.

With this in mind, we take extra precautions to protect the product from breakage.

The extra precautions/extra costs, include: double-boxing, extra bubble wrap, specially designed double thick boxes, 2″ x 2″ cardboard corner guards. The labor to secure your items from breakage is also time-consuming and costly.

Additionally:

UPS & FedEx charge $15.00-$18.90 EXTRA (on top of the standard shipping charge) for boxes that are longer than 48″. Many of our products are 47-3/4″ long and ship in boxes longer than 48″.

Click to see a detailed explanation. “Additional & Value Added Charges”.

Additionally:

UPS & FedEx do not charge by weight, rather they charge by size. They call this “dimensional weight shipping”. See picture below.

Click to view the UPS explanation: “Determine Dimensional Weight” calculation method.

We hope this explanation helps ease the sticker shock on shipping costs and thank you again for supporting small business.