Seeking Advice on Shipment Carriers for Hazmat Goods to Amazon FBA
Hello fellow Amazon sellers,
I'm currently exploring efficient and cost-effective shipment carriers for sending hazardous materials (hazmat) goods to Amazon fulfillment centers. Unfortunately, Canada Post is not an option for hazmat goods. Additionally, UPS, despite having a small business account with them, tends to be quite expensive.
Do you have any recommendations for alternative carriers that are reliable and more budget-friendly for shipping hazmat items?
Also, I'm contemplating the idea of switching to Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) for these types of goods. Considering the expenses involved in FBA – such as referral fees, storage, and fulfillment costs – on top of the high shipping charges to the warehouse, FBM seems like it might be a viable alternative.
What are your thoughts or experiences regarding FBM for hazmat goods? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance for your help!
5 replies
Seller_7LrAV0m5llaI7
The cheapest and most reliable we've found is UPS for shipping Hazmat/dangerous goods to FBA. Amazon has delivery appointments at their warehouses with UPS every day.
We are switching to FBM for most of our hazmat now due to losing 90% storage capacity in Canada for hazmat a couple months ago, and the system is still over capacity in Canada leading to delays and receiving errors.
Seller_7LrAV0m5llaI7
We send in usually 30-50 hazmat items a box so the higher shipping fees are amortized in the items. We only send in stuff that has plenty of profit or items that make more profit at FBA than FBM to the Canadian FBA Hazmat Program, so those extra surcharges add about $1-$1.60/item, but we save like $3-5 overall per item, or more, instead of shipping ourselves to customers FBM.
When doing FBM, we use UPS, Purolator or Canada Post for the really rural addresses. We label the outside of the boxes accordingly and ship ground. We have run into some issues where items come back from northern ontario/manitoba and the territories where it is fly in only as they can't include the hazmat items on passenger planes in the cargo.
Christine_Amazon
Hello @Seller_qqIRqBO23J1k8
This is Christine from Amazon Forums.
Thank you for bringing your questions to our forums also thank you @Seller_7LrAV0m5llaI7for sharing your knowledge and expertise with other sellers.
Hope you all have a great day!
Christine.
