Thread: UPS RT Shipping Rates w/ Dimensions

Have a bit of an issue with UPS RT Shipping. This probably has more to do with UPS than ASPDNSF, but here goes anyway.

On orders with multiple items, my client is packaging them up in the same box and shipping. The problem becomes that when the size of the actual box gets over a certain threshold, UPS jacks up the shipping cost. So, to be clear, regardless of the weight of the pkg, once the box gets too big, the shipping cost jumps.

Has anyone else had to deal with this? Obviously we can't send anything other than weight at the time of order (you can add in dimensions, but that only seems to apply on IsShipSeparately cases, which is not what we want), and there's no way to charge the customer based on the eventual size of the box.

Any ideas?

The default box packing model used by AdNSF treats Ship-Separately items as individual shipments with a weight and dimensions. All other non-ShipSeparately items are placed into a single dimensionless box.

In your situation, you are hitting the Dimensional Weight threshold, whereby shipments are rated according to dimensions, not weight. The default box packing routine won't help you with Dimensional Weights.

You have a couple of options: (a) switch to a non-realtime rate calculation method, sunch as individual item shipping costs, or (b) modify the GetRates() method within the ShoppingCart class to implement a box packing model that matches your business. (source code required).

I've actually written a complete customization to consolidate packages and create other packages based on the individual size of items and a table with the available boxes used to package items. I've written a routine based on a Bin Packing algorithm that uses the volume of each item, whether the item is stackable, and the stacking height delta for each additional item. When one box is full, I look at the remaining volume and find an appropriately sized box to fit the remaining items. All items are sorted by decreasing size prior to packing so I'm putting the largest items inside the box first, then finding the next item to fit, etc. until all items are packed.

I also have a routine for creating tape bundles because we have smaller boxes that contain a single item, but they could be stacked and taped together so they would get 1 UPS label without exceeding the 84" limit of girth + length. It works well for our application.

Have any other solutions surfaced for this issue since these postings?

Parrothead - are you still using the solution you developed?

Yes, it is a necessity here.

Do you have a way to share the UPS sizing system?