It's probably not news to tell any consumer who has ever had an item delivered to the home that freight charges can be as much as the cost of the item itself.
As troublesome and costly as freight is to the home consumer, so it is to the corporate Buyer.
Planning ahead properly becomes enormously important when people realize the cost of overnight or 2nd day air delivery. I once had to have a box of 48 rolls of receipt paper sent overnight to a location. The paper cost about 50 dollars while the overnight freight charges cost an additional 110 dollars. In effect, the delivery charges tripled the final total cost of each roll.
Freight charges are also a big factor in the price of an item. Although accepted industry practice in retail and e-tail is to just double the wholesale cost, freight charges can impact that final markup percentage significantly.
Companies can and do contract directly with carriers like FedEx, UPS and DHL to keep costs down and to take advantage of technology offered by the carriers to make outgoing and incoming shipment processing more efficient.
Please share any tips you have for keeping freight costs down.
In future posts, we'll discuss other aspects of freight.
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