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Shipping expenses...

Rich Z

Rich Z

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Well, I'm still plugging away at my taxes. Just got done keying in the data for all of my shipped orders and decided to take a look at the cost/profit margin for the shipping part of this business.

Sheesh! I thought charging a flat $50, which was making me a few bucks on most shipments, would be enough to cover those situations when things went wrong and some animals died in transit. From the looks of things, my profit margin there will cover a single moderately small sized order. Just barely. Heck, I didn't even figure in the cost of heat packs and cold packs, much less the cost of deli cups, lables, etc.

On top of that, so far FedEx has been dimensionalizing ALL my boxes to 7 pounds, which has raised my costs dramatically.

How do people get by charging $35 or even less on shipping? Are they looking at the bottom line at all?

Sigh... I must be doing SOMETHING wrong.....
 
Ugh. That sucks when you get down to the nitty-gritty and find out your pillow case wasn't as padded as you thought it'd be by this time. Sorry to hear of your misfortune, Rich.

I use Fedex exclusively and I charge a flat $35 to wherever it's going. It's a hair more than it actually costs to ship to most locations, but it helps to recover the time I spent on Fedex.com, and taping up a box one-handedly. Both of those activities take forever it seems.

I seem to save my cost by re-using the shipping boxes I get from you, Don, and the various other people I buy from online. And ditto with the deli-cups. I don't have any continual need for the tiny deli-cups very often so I end up having a plethora of those lying around. I don't charge for heat packs, cold packs, or labels. Those things are a dime a dozen around here.

I think the big difference I see is that you ship hundreds and thousands of snakes. And me at my max, is 8 a year. =P

As for Fedex dimensionalizing all of your boxes, how the heck does that happen? When I'm shipping online, it asks for the dimensions of the box and the weight, separately. And when it prints my label up, I have a 12x12x12 box that's 1 lb, and it stays that way. How are you doing your Fedex? Do you have their software on a separate computer with the label machine and everything? If you do, that might be something different. I'll ask my mother about it, she was in shipping and receiving for Siemens for years. Did Fedex, UPS, DHL, Airborne, etc. Maybe you're getting ripped off or something, but its something I'd definately take a look into.

The UPS/Fedex depot here in town overcharges me for stuff I could have sent from home. Most of that is a $4 handling fee for them to put a label on my box and for them to walk 7 ft and set it on the floor. Thats why I started shipping from home. Was a lot easier for me to schedule a pickup, and print out the labels myself than for me to go in and get in a nasty argument in a Christian bookstore about how they overcharge me when all they have to do is slap a label on and put it on the floor. I should get into the shipping business I know. =P

Btw, speaking of shipping issues. Who exactly is that petition being sent to, and how is that coming along? I'd be interested to know any scuttlebutt about that. As after UPS twice opened unlabeled boxes of mine and refused to ship and made me drive 50 miles to pick it up, and then wouldn't refund my money. Kind jerked my chain a little bit, hence my switch to Fedex. Fedex: Don't ask, don't tell.

Sorry to be so long-winded. =B
 
I've found that when I ship, shipping typically runs me in the $50-$60 range... that having been said, I ship priority overnight to minimize the time in travel... I reuse boxes from my frozen mice shipments mostly (since they have the appropriate styrofoam and such), but in a pinch I'll reuse snake shipping boxes. (Since I'm shipping under the radar, the Live Animal labels make things difficult.)

I've a mess of deli-cups (bought a 100pack last year), and that's what the snakes go out in. I typically lose money on shipping, but eh... if I were breeding cornsnakes to make money, I'd have quit already. :)

From what I understand, some businesses that do enough volume can get shipping discounts from UPS/FedEx/etc., but I'm nowhere even close to that level. (I'm not sure Rich is either... depends on where their threshold is...)

One way to reduce the cost is to make sure you're shipping to a business address. If you can do that, the fee is slightly lower than to a residential address.

-Kat
 
I was under the impression that both FedEx and UPS have a minimum 1 cubic foot volume (12x12x12) before they dimensionalize a box. I know for sure that is the case with UPS, just as I know that Airborne Express dimensionalized everything, no matter what.

The FedEx bill I have has a faxable adjustment request sheet, so I just plugged in all of the airbills on it and claimed that I was overcharged on those shipments. Just have to see what happens, I guess.

As for that petition that Christian did, I am assuming he is going to send it to ALL of the shipping companies. FedEx already is allowing shipping of live harmless snakes if you jump through the hoops to get a waiver from them. UPS seems to be selectively allowing it (which I am still pursuing), and Airborne evidently has dropped all animal shipments completely since being bought out by DHL. There is still some question about USPS as to whether the prohibition on snakes is actually federal law or just an internal policy, but that is another fight, I guess. I just can't spread myself too thinly over everything that appears important to me. In my next life, I want to be born into with a staff, rather than a family. :)
 
what about pick-up?

Do you ever make arrangements for pick up of snakes to avoid shipping costs and hassle on both ends? Or do you *only* ship your snakes out?
 
In order to have people pick up their snakes here (which honestly would be an extremely small subset of my total orders) I would have to have my land rezoned as commercial, have my reptile building completely rebuilt in order to comply with the Citizens with Disabilities Act, and allocate a portion of my land exclusively for a disabled parking zone. All of this would be a VERY time consuming and expensive proposition in order to save a handful of people the hassles and expense of shipping, I would think.

Not to mention the time involved that would need to be spent with each and every person who would stop by here. Time that is already in short supply, and much more needed for the higher priorities that every day seems to throw at me.

I used to do this to a small extent years ago, but spending 2 hours with a person who really only wanted to be a tourist started to wear me down. After the last several insances of people making an appointment to show up, then never showed nor bothered to call, I decided I really didn't need this sort of aggravation in my life.

I am presently working with FedEx and may be able to get them to cease the dimensionalizing of my boxes. I did some changes on my airbills recently, but it will take a while before I get my bill and can see what happened with the charges.
 
thanks for the quick reply!

I already paid for the snakes (and shipping), so I was not speaking of lookie-loos coming over to inquire about your snakes, just a buyer coming to pick up. Thanks anyway, just thought I'd ask. It would also make things simpler if I end up moving in the next few months, not to have to worry about a new shipping address and if the snakes will be kept on a hot truck all day - we'll be moving further out into the country if the deal goes through. I hope that changing shipping address or instructions won't be a problem - maybe I could just pick them up at the fedex office to avoid any possible delays on the truck??? (My mom lives out in the country and I can't tell you how many times packages, important perishable stuff like vaccines, ended up delivered to the wrong address (signed for and kept for weeks by the accepting neighbor) or taken back to the shipping office because the driver "could not find it." She was not notified until the next business day that she could pick the package up at their office or have it re-delivered - NOT something that I want to happen to live snakes!) Just a concern that I would like to set at ease.
 
My shipping expenses have skyrocketed too. I made some phone calls and was directed to the news portion of the FedEx website. That's where I located this:

Dimensional weight pricing now will apply to all U.S. and Puerto Rico express shipments in customer packaging at or below 1 cubic foot in volume. FedEx Express will continue to apply dimensional weight to all U.S. and Puerto Rico express shipments greater than 1 cubic foot.

So... It looks like as long as we use our own packaging FedEx with be "dimming" our packages even if there are the size of a jewelry box. Blah.
 
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