subject: What Is A Freight Class? It Means Savings For You! [print this page] Bay Area Courier Service likes to keep our customers happy, which means we like to safeguard your deliveries as much as we can. And one of the safeguards that customers enjoy is the designation of freight class.
Maybe you are wondering why a designation like that is a safeguard for you. The National Motor Freight Traffic Association (aka the NMFTA) created this class of delivery to lower your costs for shipment.
For example, if we charged postage stamp delivery charge for a letter, you might easily pay thousands of dollars for large shipments, based on that formula. And no business can stay in business with those kinds of costs. So the designation of freight class was created, which tells you how much we will charge you for shipping and handling.
These charges are based on package size and weight; you may remember that we measured your package before we agreed to ship it. Those measurements, along with the poundage, tell us the freight class of that particular shipment.
There are 18 freight classes in all, and we do not need to cover all of them, so we can confine ourselves to this: we will always ship any freight class, from 50 (the least expensive shipment, for the smallest packages that are larger than letters) all the way to 500 (the massive movers, the most expensive ones to ship).
If you want to know the particular freight class of your parcel, you do not even have to leave your business (or your home, if you ship from there). Just browse any local courier service website and find the scale to calculate a freight class. You enter the measurements of your package (height, breadth and length), the weight and the zip code for its destination, and you get an immediate free quote. The fees will be the same at all legitimate couriers.
If your home business has no weighing scale, you can always weigh yourself on the bathroom scale, first with the package in your hand and then without. Subtract the difference, and you have the exact weight.
If you want absolutely guaranteed pricing, visit any Bay Area Courier Service location and ask for the classification of your freight. They will quote you a price immediately, free of charge (just like the website).
As we said, we like to keep our customers happy, and two federally mandated classifications go a long way to ensuring customer satisfaction and keeping shipping prices to a minimum.
