Work outside the box for shipping savings
Those "free" Priority Mail boxes may look nice, but if you are
a volume shipper the hidden costs associated with using them can
eat up the initial savings and much more, costing you thousands of
dollars.
Example: By getting out of boxes and into a more appropriate
container material, ThreeSource, Bradley, IL and the USPS are each
saving $100,000 / year.
The problem with free boxes says Marty Bothwell Jr., Director
of Sales for ThreeSource is that they have multiple drawbacks-they
arrive flat, which means labor is consumed to build them; they
require dunnage to hold contents in place; and they are often
larger and heavier than they need to be for the items contained,
resulting in higher postage.
ThreeSource petitioned USPS for free alternative container
material, a padded cohesive wrap that could be sized to each
shipment on demand. ThreeSource could then use a cold seal machine
it already had in house to automate the process. No waste, no
dunnage and very little labor.
USPS agreed to the change. Why? Because even with the required
cobranding Priority Mail emblems customed printed on the outside
of the cohesive wrap, the material was less expensive because of
higher "cube" and related lower transport costs. |
