How are online stores shipping for so cheap?

September 23, 2024 5:04 PM

How do online stores ship things so cheaply? I was going to send a kitchen aide mixer to my sister, but it looks like it will be well over $100 dollars to ship it. I bought it online for like $250 and free shipping. It's even more extreme for things like furniture, which are more expensive to ship than they cost. Even small boxes can cost as much to ship as I paid for the product + free shipping.

If the answer is they ship in bulk, how many shipments a week does it take to qualify? If it is using a different company from USPS/UPS/Fedex, what company do they use?

posted by hermanubis to Shopping (10 answers total)

How are you calculating shipping? I ship a relatively low volume USPS/Fedex/UPS but I get "volume discount" because I have an account with those services. That alone massively drops the rate I pay to ship stuff. part of the reason "man off the street" pricing is so high is that shipping companies assume that you will be a problem in some way that will require labor time.
posted by Dr. Twist at 5:28 PM on September 23, 2024

Best answer: I use Pirate Ship to evaluate options and purchase postage, and the lowest-cost results are usually a USPS or UPS option
posted by zachxman at 5:34 PM on September 23, 2024 [11 favorites]

The answer is indeed bulk. Bulk and that they contractually agree to ship only using the one carrier for X amount of time. Exceptions may be made for packages that fall outside the parameters of the contract — going to countries not covered by the carrier or above / below a certain weight.

An individual cannot match these qtys.

Depending on your country, you may be able to get discounts for small businesses or by using a third party like Stamps.com or Chit Chats or whatever. For instance, Canada Post has a small business discount. You get a membership card and can apply the discount to any postal thing you do (shipping, packaging, etc.).
posted by dobbs at 5:47 PM on September 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

Also, in regards to qtys, it's often by weight, annually.
posted by dobbs at 5:47 PM on September 23, 2024

Also many/most online-only retailers can fold a certain amount of shipping costs into the "base" pricing across all the items they sell. What they call the regular price and the shipping is often a convenient fiction. They can spread that cost of shipping around and e.g. overcharge a bit on small/light items to undercharge a bit on bulky/ones. Or overcharge a bit on close shipments to under charge a bit on long ones. This works in tandem with the bulk discount rates mentioned above.

This is also why smaller sellers usually have to charge more than Amazon for shipping: they don't get the volume discounts and they also don't have as much opportunity to spread the shipping costs around.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:04 PM on September 23, 2024 [10 favorites]

Online stores don't sell product so much as they sell logistics. They have to compete based on getting things from the manufacturer to your door as cheaply as possible, because that's the only cost they can control.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:07 PM on September 23, 2024

Here to echo Pirate Ship. Last month I sent a Kitchen Aid mixer from Michigan to Colorado via Pirate Ship and it cost $30-35 on UPS after the discount.
posted by icaicaer at 6:09 PM on September 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

As someone with a hobby "business", that includes a LOT of shipping...

Pirate Ship saves my buyers a few bucks. Still, when shipping is more that what they want to buy, not great.
posted by Windopaene at 7:12 PM on September 23, 2024

Can't compare shipping with Amazon. Amazon had built warehouses throughout the US and stocked them based on AI-predicted consumer purchase patterns, and sub-contracted out its delivery service (all those Amazon Prime vans) for last-mile delivery. It also has a huge fleet of 18-wheelers and cargo planes to shift stuff from ports to those warehouses that we don't notice unless we look for them.
posted by kschang at 5:24 AM on September 24, 2024

Because you aren't writing a check with at least seven zeros on it to UPS/FedEx/USPS/etc on an annual basis. Wherever you bought that mixer certainly does.

Plus, as others have said, it's the logistics that also allow the cheaper pricing. If you showed up to the UPS port at your local logistic focused airport (like, KSBF in Louisville, KY) with a set of L9N containers filled with labeled packages that can just be fork lifted into their MD-11s, you'd get a good deal as well. Amazon's free Prime shipping was originally just Jeff and friends stuffing packages into every nook and cranny left over after the paying customers got their orders loaded in the trailers FedEx and UPS dropped off since Amazon was paying a flat rate per truck load anyway.

But, like others have said, Pirate Ship is the easiest place to deal with that will get you into the lowest tier of volume discounts, if that's your actual question.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:52 AM on September 25, 2024