subject: What Are Freight Classes In Shipping? [print this page] Freight class is a classification that you're going to see on every quote or invoice that you get from a courier company. This is one of the most important figures that the company calculates when they're trying to figure how much to charge you for shipping something with their service. When you contact a courier Madison based, they are going to first of all ask you a few simple questions when determining your quote, and the most basic are going to be what size is your package, and how heavy is it. These are two of the primary figures used to come up with your final freight class.
There are other numbers which go into the final amount that your shipment is going to cost you, but these aren't enough information for them to arrive at a charge without knowing the freight class beforehand. The easiest example of this is that the second most important number after the freight class is figuring out how far they are going to have to transport your package. However, that number is meaningless without knowing what size and how heavy your cargo is, as that will be the primary determining factor in which type of vehicle they are using to ship it in.
Size and weight aren't the only two parts of the freight class, although they are the main ones. They will also adjust the freight class if there are any sort of special requirements associated with your shipment. This means that if they have to do anything out the ordinary to load, unload, or transport your shipment, you will be assessed a pricier freight class. These types of things include extremely fragile cargo, oversized things which may need special equipment to move, or items which need to be transported in temperature controlled units.
Freight classes are a good general figure to help estimate the cost of shipping, and as you get more experienced at shipping your goods, you should be able to estimate your own freight class to give you an idea of what to expect when the quote comes back from your courier company. Remember though that if you need anything special such as expedited shipping on your order, the amount that you have to pay is going to go up accordingly. You can also check past quotes and invoices for freight classes to get a better idea of what classes are going to be assigned to certain kinds of shipments.
