Have you ever heard that ground shipping can transport to places airplanes cannot? Ground transportation is more affordable and reliable compared to air freight since this does not require expensive infrastructure and a large airport. The ground can also be utilized even in distant locations. Today, shipping is more than half of the logistics budget of many retailers, and therefore, they need to seek more advanced forms of delivery.
Businesses and e-commerce are finding that ground delivery provides the best combination of price and quick delivery, and getting their orders to their customers. Just in case you want to reduce the expenses and increase the efficiency of delivery, ground shipments may turn out to be the method that will significantly increase customer satisfaction and maintain the profit margin at a healthy level. Find out how you can use ground transportation to ship orders to your customers in your home country efficiently and cost-effectively.
It refers to any type of shipping that occurs over land rather than in the air or on the water. It is in the majority of cases the cheapest mode of domestic shipping and the packages are brought by road or by rail. It mostly focuses on customers located in the home country or state of your business, but may stretch to the nearby countries, such as air freight handling between the US and Mexico or Canada. Every order delivered through the air or by sea still depends on ground transportation when it comes to the last mile.
It usually takes more time than overnight or second-day air transportation since the freight cars involved stop numerous times at distribution centers across the country, due to loading and unloading of various packages. When it comes to ground shipments, the shipping duration relies on the distance between the recipient and the shipper.
The following are some of the benefits of ground delivery as compared to other modes of shipping, such as air freight services:
You now have a number of options for shipping at ground level. Large shipping companies can also provide ground delivery or standard delivery. Ground or standard shipping may have several options of different speeds depending on the destination and carrier. Which of them would suit your needs would be based on your delivery needs, product, and so on. Below are the major carriers within the US that provide ground delivery:
UPS covers the 50 states of the United States, in addition to a great number of foreign destinations. The company services over 120,000 vehicles through the business and is known to be among the faster ground-based shipping companies. UPS Ground can deliver packages weighing up to 150 pounds, delivered within one to five business days. The company estimates that approximately 90 percent of UPS Ground packages are brought within three days.
The maximum length of ground packages must be 108 inches or combined length and girth must not be more than 130 inches. The UPS Ground delivery cost is $11.32 per pound and goes up as the package grows bigger. As an example, they will deliver a 20-pound package at $18.11, a 60-pound package at $29.30, and a 150-pound package at $113.76. Depending on the distance that packages travel, rates can be higher based on a similar zone-based system as in USPS.
United States Postal Service has service to all locations in the United States. It operates over 200,000 vehicles in the country and delivers approximately 500 million pieces of mail per day. The pricing structure used by USPS is cubic and dimensional. It is a common way of sending ground shipments within the country. The USPS has a service called Ground Advantage which the company provides packages within two to five business days to be delivered with a 70-pound weight limit. The ground delivery rates under Ground Advantage depend on the origin and destination of the package as well as the weight.
The lower price is $6 per four-ounce package. On packages weighing more than a pound, the rates start at 8.40 for one pound, approximately 20 dollars on a 20-pound package, and about $ 58.30 on a 70-pound package. The rates are determined by the distance you want to ship, as well as it is determined by a zone calculation, the further away the shipment, the higher the zone. For example, a shipment within 50 miles is a Zone 1 shipment, and a coast-to-coast shipment is Zone 8. The USPS Domestic Zone Chart enables you to determine the zone to which your shipment belongs by inserting the origin and destination ZIP code.
FedEx specifically offers expedited shipping services for approximately 14 million packages shipped daily across the globe. The ground delivery FedEx service involves FedEx Ground on weekdays to provide business deliveries and FedEx Home Delivery, which delivers every weekday to residential addresses. The FedEx ground and home delivery can bring packages anywhere over the continental US, and this is done within a time of one to five days, depending on the shipping distance and the weight of the package.
The FedEx ground delivery charges are similar to UPS, and the lowest ground delivery charges start with a one-pound package at $11.32 and $5.15 to be delivered at the residential address. FedEx provides ground service to packages weighing up to 150 pounds, those that are 108 inches long, and with a sum of length and girth being 165 inches.
The duration that packages take to arrive is dependent on the shipping setting selected in terms of the speed of delivery, the distance of transportation, in addition to the final destination of the package. The above-mentioned carriers tend to deliver within the promised period, which may be delayed due to poor weather, natural disasters, or other circumstances that close roads and railways.
Direct shipping to a state with a common border can take one to three days; however, packages that are shipped to farther states might even take up to five days. With the help of 3PL firms like Shipixy, retailers of today have increased to having faster shipping of products via ground means with the aid of several storage facilities. We offer warehousing and fulfillment services.
You can divide your inventory into various sections that are strategically distributed geographically throughout the nation or the world. When customers make an order, their orders are shipped out to the fulfillment center that is nearest to their delivery address. This means that more companies can easily afford to provide their customers with two-day shipping.
Ground freight is an economical delivery service, and the rates will be different according to the size of your package and how many miles your package has to be transported. Nevertheless, you will be able to estimate the costs of your ground delivery within seconds through our quick and easy shipping calculator.
All we need to know is when you are shipping and where, and what your package weighs, and we will give you an immediate price. You will be in a position to compare the ground freight rates of various shipping companies and book services easily.
