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[Kate Pinyan]

I am hosting a round table discussion at NAVUG Summit on October 13, and would love to get some feedback in advance of this session around:

• things that have helped you to reduce shipping costs and improve efficiency for your shipping processes
• important factors to consider when packing
• the ins and outs of various carrier shipping services
• tips and tricks (or pitfalls) discovered along the way
  
• other topics you are interested in hearing on for this topic

Thank you for all your suggestions and feedback in advance! And I hope to see everyone in Nashville in October! 

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Kate Pinyan
Marketing and Business Development
Lanham Associates/Lanham Services
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[Paul Turner]

Here are some general thoughts:

1. Keep up to date with carrier changes.  Every year there is some change to some rule like a new dimensional divisor, increased surcharge costs, new surcharges etc.  Audit these new rules against actual shipping history to find the true impact on your business.  For example one carrier might tell the associated press that they are only increasing prices on average 5%, but because of sophisticated changes to zone and dim rules, the impact on your business may be more like 12%.  Use this data in your negotiations with the carriers.
2. Pack everything as if it is a precious gift you are sending to your special someone.  When people care about what they are packing, they won’t do things like leaving a lot of empty space in the box or putting together “salads” that risk damaging products in transit.
3. Get rid of the notion that the Post Office parcel service is always cheaper.  This was only generally true up until about 9 years ago when they finally implemented zone-based rating, and then soon after also started dimensionally billing packages.  While it is still true that USPS does not charge residential fees, they are making great strides toward a more profitable business model.  If your customer does not specify the carrier they want to use, always shop around.
4. If your warehouse relies on manual methods of entering package dimensions and/or package weight (ALWAYS enter dims for every package), see if you can implement some kind of alert system to catch “fat-finger” mistakes.  We found a common mistake was entering 106 inches instead of 16 or something similar, so we created an alert if any dim over 99 inches is entered for small package shipments.  While the carrier usually credits you the difference in price for such a mistake, if you are billing your customer at the time of shipping based on the entered weight and dims, you may be able to avoid some customer service issues with these alerts.
5. Audit your carrier freight bills regularly.  You can build an auditing system, buy one, or hire a service for this.  Keep track of the weights and dimensions you measured for each package in order to compare this data to what the carrier billed.  You will find shipping charge correction fees that just do not make sense and were likely caused by two boxes being scanned as one on the carrier’s conveyor system (like if the length was doubled or tripled in the correction fee).  Address charge corrections can be billed for things like typing “100 S.” with a period instead of “100 S” without a period.  Get as many of these bogus charges reversed as your resources allow.
6. Speaking of address charge corrections, build or buy a system that calls the specified carrier’s Address Validation API before releasing an order to the warehouse.  An ounce of prevention yada yada yada.
7. Ask about special shipping services/programs from the carriers.  The carriers reserve certain special programs and they may approach you about them after a while.  For example, did you know there is now such a thing as Zone 1 rates?  (For many years most carrier rate charts started at Zone 2)  Couple other programs you may find interesting: “Ground Freight Pricing” and “Smart Post.”
8. See if a regional carrier fits your business model and shipping area.  Usually these regional carriers offer lower accessorial fees, and faster shipping times to some major cities.
9. For LTL shipping: if you ship a lot of pallets and are comfortable handling details yourself, pick a few good lanes and negotiate shipping rates directly with those carriers instead of going through a broker to save costs.  Otherwise brokers are great for booking a couple dozen pallets or less per week.
10. Shipping more than 2 boxes of hazmat in one shipment?  See if sending it LTL, with just one Haz fee per pallet, would be cheaper.  (Probably not if it is going to a residence that would require a lift gate)
11. If you want to ship dangerous goods overseas on rare occasion but cannot justify the cost of becoming IATA certified, there are Hazmat “brokers” who can prepare your shipment for a fee and send it from their facility.
12. Shipping anything to California, or to anyone who might re-sell your product to California at any time?  Make sure to read up on Proposition 65.  “They” are going to start enforcing these regulations with much more enthusiasm starting next year (2018).  This affects everyone: manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

OK I’ve probably reached the limit for one post.  I could keep going.  I’ve been involved in packing/shipping/fulfillment/distribution in one form or another for 11 years.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend Summit this year.  I would have loved to attend this session.

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Paul Turner
Liberty Mountain
Sandy UT
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[Ian Ray]

For “fat finger” typos on box dimensions, I sorted this out by making barcodes that correspond to each box type with the tab key (parse ^009) included. Our shipping department is inside a cooler as well, so they can continue to wear gloves when inputting the box dimensions using barcodes.

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Ian Ray
Cypress Grove
Arcata CA
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