New Shipping Rules 101: Size Matters

Sellers brace for rate hikes, dim-weight pricing by major shippers

As the new year approaches, online sellers can make a collective exhale as the penultimate moment in the holiday season offers a respite from what all indicators say was a busy one - perhaps even a record-setting one.

When business gears up again, sellers will have to contend with some new pricing and shipping equations. Specificially at issue is so-called dimensional-weight pricing. As Ina Steiner explains on AuctionBytes, "Dim weight pricing is based on the cubic size or dimension of the mailpiece rather than the weight, and is designed to account for packages with a large size-to-weight ratio (in other words, big packages that don't weigh much in relation to their size)."

Additionally, rate increases at FedEx and UPS will take effect in the new year, with a USPS rate hike likely to follow. But before conceding to the reality of higher shipping costs, volume shippers ought to talk to these companies about discounts. That's what Len Oppenheimer, owner of The Golden Box Inc., a box and packaging business in East Rockaway, N.Y. told Joyce M. Rosenberg of The Associated Press, in a story we found on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette web site.