Our sister blog over at Materialogic just put out a great piece about dimensional (DIM) weight pricing that is worth a read. FedEx and UPS adopted new rules for DIM weight pricing about a year ago.  These rules not only changed the pricing for shipped goods, but also meant that more items would be subject to DIM weight pricing (as opposed to actual weight).

The details of how DIM weight is calculated — and what this means for shippers — is covered in the post. But the basic idea is this: less dense packages (large but light items) may now be subject to increased shipping rates.

We wanted to bring it to our reader’s attention because there might be some special cases where DIM weight makes a big difference in shipping costs. For example:                          

• Temperature controlled food and nutraceuticals. The new DIM weight rules make less dense material more expensive to ship, and few things are less dense than Styrofoam. So, if you need ice pack shippers with Styrofoam, you really should research new strategies for keeping shipping costs down.

• Corporate gifts and club packages. If you aren’t being efficient in grouping and packaging items, you might be throwing money away.

• ecommerce. Gone are the days when you could take a single item and throw it in a box with some packaging. Shippers now have to be more efficient with each item sold (and more efficient with warehousing and shipping locations, too.)

We would love to hear from our readers whether DIM weight pricing has affected business, and how you have been dealing with the change.