Let me illustrate what dimensional or DIM weight is, why it matters and how it impacts your bottom line.

Imagine you’ve received numerous orders for your t-shirt. You have equal units of two box sizes and you fulfill orders interchangeably with either.

Tee                                                     Flat Box                                           Tall Box

                             

Your shirt weighs eight ounces. Since the carriers charge in whole pounds, or any part thereof, you factor the cost of shipping one pound into the product price or the delivery fee. That decision could cost you.

Package weight goes beyond pounds. Since space is limited in trucks, carriers consider the cubic dimension in inches of a package and divide it by a standard factor to calculate its DIM weight.

Package

Length

 Width Height

Dimension
Flat Box

6

 6 2

72
Tall Box

6

 6 8

288

The dimensional factor is 139 cubic inches per pound for Fed Ex domestically. The DIM of the flat box would be one pound but the tall box would be three pounds*. Carrier ship charge is based upon the greater of the actual or the DIM weight. The difference charged by Fed Ex in this stylized example is at least 15%! Can you afford a double-digit increase on an expense that impacted potentially every order?

Distance Traveled Under 150 miles Over 1,800 miles
Ground Service

$0.92 more or 15%

+$2.50 or 26%
Overnight Service

+$3.82 or 15%

 +$13.02 or 21%

Have a variety of boxes and use the smallest size needed for an order to reduce the occurrence of DIM weight adjustments. Use a large envelope sized polybag for items that do not need rigidity when shipped.

DIM weight would not impact, say, software or in-store pick up. However, shipping costs are unavoidable for delivered physical products. If you plan for DIM, you’ll be able to lower prices charged to customers (possibly increasing conversion) or generate larger ship margins.

Surprised to discover that shipping a t-shirt had such complications? Imagine the additional complexities in how your website is coded, renders on different devices, is read by search engine crawlers, and how this impacts your marketing.

Keep checking in here as we share other insights about a company’s presence on the digital highway.

* Cubic inches divided by DIM factor is 72/139 compared to 288/139, rounded to 1 and 3, respectively.

DIM weight calculator