Freight Delivery for Items Too Big for a Parcel

Too big for the parcel rates

A shop that sells furniture, hot tubs, machinery or anything else on a pallet has a delivery problem that a shop selling books does not.

Large items travel by freight: shared trucks that carry pallets and crates between depots, then out to the door.

The price depends on the destination, how the item gets off the truck and what the customer expects when it arrives.

Most online carts are built for parcels. They work out shipping from weight and a rate table, and a crate weighing as much as two people falls outside everything the table was made for.

The result is a price at checkout that is either far too low, which the shop pays for, or far too high, which the customer walks away from.

What decides a freight price

• Distance and region, with remote and island deliveries costing more.
• Weight and size of the crate or pallet.
• A home rather than a business address, which often adds a charge.
• A liftgate to lower the item where there is no loading dock.
• An appointment call to book the delivery window.
• Delivery inside rather than at the curb.

The fourth catches most shops out. Freight rates assume a loading dock, and a house has none, so the truck needs a liftgate, which has to be booked and usually costs extra.

What a parcel cart does with a pallet

Given a crate's weight, a parcel calculator either refuses, caps the charge at its highest band or produces a figure nobody would pay.

Shops work around it with a flat rate that suits a delivery across town and loses money on one to a rural address three hundred kilometres away.

Or they settle shipping after the order, which surprises the customer at the worst moment.

Neither is a delivery policy. Both come from asking a parcel tool to answer a freight question.

Freight as its own step

Mark freight items in the shop so the cart treats them differently. A cart containing one gets a freight step instead of the parcel table.

That step can do one of two things: show a price for the customer's area, or take the order and promise a delivery quote within a stated time, with delivery paid separately.

Either way the customer knows before paying that delivery is handled differently, and why.

Quoting by postal code

A Canadian postal code says a lot. Its first letter gives the province or region, and its first three characters mark out an area, which is how many freight prices are set.

When the second character is a zero, the code covers a rural area, where deliveries usually cost more and take longer.

A table of prices by those first three characters, built from the shop's own freight bills, lets the cart show a realistic price for most addresses and fall back to a quote for the rest.

Quoting on request

For items that vary too much to price in advance, ask a few questions at the cart: the postal code, whether a truck can reach the door, any steps or tight corners, and whether inside delivery is wanted.

Reply with a quote and a link to pay it within one business day, and say in the cart how long the quote will take.

A quote that arrives the next morning finds the customer still interested. One that takes four days often arrives after they have bought elsewhere.

A worked example

A sculpture foundry casts bronze for artists and sells a small range of its own work online.

Wall plaques and small animals fit in a box. Garden pieces, such as a life-size heron and a birdbath, travel crated on a pallet.

The shop's cart used parcel rates by weight. For the heavy pieces it applied its top band, which covered only part of the real freight bill, and the foundry paid the rest on every garden piece sold.

The first rural order showed the other problem. The crate reached the end of a long gravel driveway with no liftgate booked, the driver could not unload it, and it went back to the depot for a second attempt.

The garden pieces are now marked as freight, and their pages explain crated delivery to the curb, the liftgate, the booking call and collection from the foundry.

The cart asks for a postal code and promises a quote by the next business day.

Say it on the product page

Delivery details belong on the product page, where the customer decides, not only on a policy page in the footer.

Say how the item travels and what arrives: a crate, a pallet, a box. Say whether delivery is to the curb or inside, whether someone must be home, and that the freight company will call to book a window.

Say how long it usually takes, honestly, and whether collection from the shop is possible. A customer who knows all this before paying is not surprised on delivery day.

Delivery day

Freight drivers usually deliver to the curb or the end of the driveway. Moving a hot tub to the back garden is a different service, arranged and priced in advance.

Ask customers to inspect the crate before signing and to note any damage on the delivery receipt. A signature on a clean receipt makes a later damage claim much harder.

Put that advice in the order confirmation as well, since it matters only on the day.

The counter-case

A shop that sells one large item a year can quote it by phone and email, and a freight step in the cart may be more than it needs.

Heavy items that still fit within parcel limits can stay in the ordinary cart, as long as the rates have been checked against real bills.

And a business that delivers only locally, with its own truck, can set a fixed local charge.

For anything travelling further by freight, show it as a separate step, quote by postal code or on request, and explain it before checkout.

Before the next large order

1. Mark every freight item in the shop.
2. Pull last year's freight bills for real costs.
3. Build a price table by postal code area.
4. Add a quote request for everything else.
5. Explain delivery on each product page.
6. Offer collection where it is possible.
7. Tell customers to inspect before signing.

Step two keeps the rest honest. Prices built from the shop's own freight bills, rather than a guess or a parcel table, are the ones that neither lose money nor scare customers off.

Telling customers about delivery before they pay follows the same logic as in orders that arrive while the owner is away.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.