Placement fees and full pallets
We always ship in full pallets to Amazon (40" x 48", 1500 lbs).
This minimizes the freight costs/unit and freight costs/pound.
With the new Placement Fees, for zero fees, we are having to ship partial pallets to 5 locations.
Some of these pallets only have 10 boxes on them, when a full pallet would have 80. Very inefficient and expensive.
How do we maximize shipping efficiently, in full pallets, in this new "placement fee" environment?
I hope an Amazon Mod can answer this.
Thank you.
Placement fees and full pallets
We always ship in full pallets to Amazon (40" x 48", 1500 lbs).
This minimizes the freight costs/unit and freight costs/pound.
With the new Placement Fees, for zero fees, we are having to ship partial pallets to 5 locations.
Some of these pallets only have 10 boxes on them, when a full pallet would have 80. Very inefficient and expensive.
How do we maximize shipping efficiently, in full pallets, in this new "placement fee" environment?
I hope an Amazon Mod can answer this.
Thank you.
38 replies
Seller_0rXAME9V4LQSx
Can you not just compare the two amounts yourself? Thats the difference, one way is more convenient for you with more shipping to different locations by amazon and the other is more shipping locations for you which is more convenient for amazon as they don't have to break up your pallet and ship it around. You just have to decide which way is more cost effective for you, to do the work yourself or to pay them to do it.
Seller_z3XfkorVSmnEY
We haven't shipped on pallets in years, but isn't there an option on Amazon to say that some will go LTL and others will got SPD? That may help your out of pocket costs.
Seller_0EBsyUMvixIPH
Work on FBM, shopify, and walmart. Keep your top sellers FBA but everything else has got to be FBM'd.
Seller_kl5Xe6kEg2gLe
I hope the Mods can give us both some insight. Same thing here. We are East Coast. If we choose East Coast they want us to send 3 pallets to CA for $800 plus a $167 fee to ship together!
They dont even have an East Coast or Midwest option available. What a waste with dozens of Amazon warehouses in the Southeast we used to be able to ship to.
Seller_8uc0P1EJEs5cJ
No news yet from the Mods. Hopefully they will address this question.
Amazon will eventually need to take into account the environmental costs of inefficient shipping. The carbon footprint with the new system is huge.
In the old system, we would ship to one nearby warehouse, and Amazon would redistribute the inventory accurately themselves, always shipping full trucks, so the carbon footprint was appreciably lower per unit shipped.
Sure, not many talk about this aspect, but pressure is growing on this, and it will need to be addressed eventually. Better sooner than later.
Seller_R41nI6sFnqk1e
Are these single sku pallets? I've found that creating a pallet shipping template for each sku prevents them from splitting to partial pallets, or charging placement fees.
Seller_mCS4udLB276Ho
who thinks we should all go back to doing seller filled orders and amazon andy jasse and fba can go ---- themselves ??
Seller_J4oH7SKq8yU4d
We are finding the "shipping partial pallets to 5 locations" option to be more costly when calculating the overall costs for shipping to multiple locations. Even if eliminating the "placement fees" you have to remember multiple shipments means multiple shipping costs. Like someone else said, you will most likely need to assess and compare for yourself by clicking on each option Amazon provides (along with the shipping cost) to see what is the least expensive option.
Seller_DPetgMN6a9UZU
Either ship SPD and waive the placement fee, ship a pallet closest to your warehouse and pay the full placement fee, or store your inventory in Amazon's AWD warehouse.
Seller_9T3VC6FL4WDKJ
TFH is right.
You need to go to create new packing template and under template type choose Single SKU pallet instead of Case Pack
