USPS Increases Shipping for Small Businesses by $4-$20 Per Package

A few weeks ago, it was business as usual: Take the kids to school, grab a cup of coffee, check orders, and start the process of shipping. Typically, it’s fairly painless – rates tend to start just under $9 in the midwest and go up from there depending on how far from my small town the orders are going. After logging into my shipping software, we were hit with a shipping fee of $25 and change which is an increase on average of over $15 per box.

I went ahead and shipped, knowing that I was losing money on each of the orders shipped. Needing to figure out exactly what is going on, I turned off orders on the site and contacted USPS as well as my shipping service until we figured out why. Surcharges of $15 for boxes over 30 inches in length.

Since we have pallets of 36″ boxes, this obviously was a problem and we needed to regroup. We’ve now got 30″ boxes arriving (they’ll be packed a bit tighter) and sales will resume today for shipping on May 3rd pending arrival of these new boxes. Shipping will go up by roughly $4.

We’re also tossing in an “I did that” sticker in the box with each order while supplies last, so don’t forget to look for that.