What Is A Freight Class?

May 5th, 2011 Scott P Gallagher

A freight class is an assessment of the difficulty and cost of your package to ship, as is going to be determined by the Seattle courier service that you use to transport your goods. Courier companies use freight classes to help them determine how much they should charge for the cargo that they transport. The freight class helps them both understand how much their own expense in the shipment is going to be, as well as to fit the shipment into the category that they feel their profit margin should be in for the type of shipment that they are going to be transporting. IE: more difficult and odd requests should net them a higher profit due to the unusual nature of the shipment.

The basic freight class that your courier company uses is going to be arrived at by calculating the weight and the size of your shipment. They may assign a preliminary freight class for quoting purposes based on your estimation of these figures when you originally place your request for service. However, these may be adjusted later when they actually take possession of your cargo and weight it, which they usually will do.

This helps them assess how much they should charge you for the shipment, because the size of your cargo is, along with the distance you're shipping, the most important indicator of how much of their resources you are consuming. Those resources are considered as the space available in their vehicles, and the time of their employees.

Freight class is not solely based on size, even though this makes for the base calculation. It is also adjusted based on any special requirements, or on any unusual difficulties involved with transporting the shipment in question. Examples of things that would create an adjustment of this type include shipments which are extremely breakable and require extra care, those with require special trailers to transport, such as temperature sensitive shipments, or cargo which is extremely overweight for its size.

By gaining a better understanding of how the freight class system works, you can start to anticipate shipping costs ahead of time. This can be a very useful tool in helping to breakdown the projected cost of certain shipments, allowing you to more accurately and effectively price your own products. Keep in mind that there are many other factors involved in shipping cost beyond freight class, such as distance shipped, and speed of shipping options.

About the Author:

Scott Gallagher is an International Consultant for Seattle Courier Service. With exceptional knowledge of the Seattle Delivery Service, Scott is also becoming an expert with Local Internet Marketing.

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