What's Zone Skipping? Everything You Need to Know

The cost of parcel shipping has skyrocketed since the start of Covid-19. In fact, the cost of shipping a container of goods has risen by 80 percent since last November.

Zone skipping was established by major courier companies in order to reduce transportation costs for merchants skipping multiple items. Instead of individual parcels going through multiple delivery points, items are added onto a consolidation truck and then delivered to a designated delivery point.

This blog post will cover everything you need to know about zone skipping to ensure you know how to reduce transportation costs.

What’s Zone Skipping?

Zone skipping refers to a shipping method that helps ship individual parcels or less-than-truck hold (LTL) shipments easier.

For instance, say you want to ship a single package from New York to Los Angeles. However, instead of delivering each package to its destination, all items are added to a consolidated truck to help reduce transportation costs. Then, the items inside a consolidated truck are delivered to a delivery point where the carrier can pick up and distribute items to their final destination.

Combining shipments can be a cost-effective shipping method for eCommerce businesses and help combat long delivery lead times.

How Does Zone Skipping Work? (Shipping Zone Example)

Say an eCommerce company wants to ship 3,000 packages from New York to California at $10.00 per parcel. This eCommerce company will ultimately pay $30,000 in shipping costs.

However, if this eCommerce company wants to reduce transportation costs, they could opt for using zone skipping via a consolidated truckload. Using this method will reduce the cost of parcel shipping by $5,000, making it an excellent shipping method for cost savings.

Many courier companies implement zone skipping practices to help ship individual packages or less-than-truck hold shipments easier. UPS zone skipping implements these practices just like couriers such as FedEx and USPS.

Related post: How International Shipping Zones Will Help You Ship Better

Pros and Cons of Zone Skipping

Zone skipping can benefit eCommerce merchants by reducing transaction costs and faster delivery lead times. We’ll go over the pros and cons of zone skipping to understand how an LTL carrier minimizes the cost of parcel shipping.

Pros of zone skipping

• Saves money: Zone skipping reduces the cost of freight and the overall cost of delivery. Both the eCommerce merchant/shipper and the customer will experience these savings individually
• Reduces transit times: Zone skipping allows merchants to cut down on transit time by not having multiple shipments sent to different sorting facilities. Instead, LTL carriers create quick and faster deliveries
• Full tracking and trace visibility: Zone skipping quickly allows eCommerce merchants to track the shipments to see the expected arrival time

Cons of zone skipping

• Items can’t be shipped immediately: The only con of zone skipping is that eCommerce merchants can’t expect their orders to be shipped immediately. Items can’t be shipped until a truck carries enough volume

Zone Skipping Your Orders with Easyship

Zone skipping is a great strategy to implement to reduce transportation costs. Zone skipping also allows you to cut down on transit time by not having multiple shipments sorted at various sorting facilities.

What if there was a way to reduce transportation costs even further? Easyship is your one-stop shop for cost savings for shipping. With Easyship, you’ll gain instant access to features and tools such as the following (plus more):

• Free Shipping Rates Calculator: Access high-volume discounts from major couriers. Plus, get instant access to delivery lead times from premium shipping couriers
• Global Fulfillment: Easyship has warehouse partners on four continents to reach your customers worldwide. Plus, Easyship helps scale up fulfillment capabilities without increasing overhead costs
• Shipping Policy Generator: Our shipping policy generator helps merchants and crowdfunding campaigns generate their shipping policy by providing tracking and insurance options, plus other vital information for your shipping process

Ready to ship? Sign up for a FREE Easyship account and create your optimized shipping strategy and learn more about how zone skipping works

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