Nine Tips to Help Improve Your Outbound Parcel Shipping

“UPS, for instance, has 38 so-called accessorial charges or extra costs,” Kline notes. “You need to know what they are in order to make a fair comparison between, say, UPS and USPS, which usually doesn’t levy these charges.”

6. Review packaging and dunnage. Kline offers an example of how to save real dollars in this area: A 2.1-pound package translates into 3 pounds to carriers. But if you slightly reduce dunnage, you may be able to bring that package weight to 2 pounds with no discernible impact on customer satisfaction. Multiply that by the number of packages you ship in a week, for instance, and you could see some significant cost reduction. And all of those savings drop right to your bottom line.