Domestic Freight costs skyrocket while sellers focus on Placement fees.

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Domestic Freight costs skyrocket while sellers focus on Placement fees.

While none of us are happy with the new Placement Fees. What I am not seeing being complained about are the incredulous increase in LTL pallet domestic shipments. I normally send in at least 4-6 pallets every month. Last year, my freight costs were generally about $0.09 - $0.12 per pound. So shipments were averaging $100-150 from Miami to Charlotte NC. Most times they were collected by AAA Cooper Transport company (assigned by Amazon).

What's changed?

Amazon has taken over the transport routes with Amazon Freight LTL and the shipping fees have mostly tripled as they introduced (without warning) their own freight company to handle freight. So now I am looking at $0.28 - $0.45 per pound for similar shipments since January 2024 and longer destinations like TEB9, ORF2 and ABE8 from Miami. AAA Cooper Transport no longer collects my pallets. Now it's Amazon trucks and Central Transport. Did all domestic carriers increase their prices in 2024 or is this just a new price racket that Amazon thought of to squeeze the seller? And by the way, if you make a mistake and need to cancel and rebuild your shipment, make sure you do it with an hour of creating your shipment or you will be charged even though the shipment was not even close to being collected. You have to file a claim and hope you are refunded every time.

When you sell grocery items that are price sensitive, with low margins, 300%-400% increases in freight and the new Placement fees... well that puts you in a pickle you can't sell. And splitting pallets into 5 shipments where a pallet has 7 boxes on at least one pallet in a shipment of 50 boxes makes ZERO sense. I don't trust a small pallet to arrive safely and the shipping cost to five locations to eliminate placement fees is replaced by an increase in shipping cost that's maybe $50 cheaper than just sending one pallet to one location (not worth the risk of losing inbound inventory). That doesn't even include the cost of buying pallets for all these extra shipments Amazon is trying to encourage us to do.

What are your thoughts on the increase in LTL freight costs?

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