Knowledge Base

In the previous article, we introduced United States Postal Service (USPS) Commercial Plus Pricing (CPP) which is a discounted rate offered by USPS to their high volume shipping customers. If you ship more than 50,000 packages per year, you could also be eligible for Priority Mail Cubic Pricing in addition to CPP. Cubic Pricing offers tremendous savings over regular Priority Mail rates if your package is:

• Less than 20 pounds
• Less than 18 inches in length
• Less than 0.5 cubic feet

Cubic Pricing is calculated based on the transit distance and volume of the package. Package weight has no bearing on the shipping rates as long as the package is no more than 20 lbs. This means if your merchandise are small and heavy, you may be able to benefit from Cubic Pricing. The price chart for Cubic Pricing is as follows:

The leftmost column is the tiered volume range of package up to maximum of 0.5 cubic feet (864 cubic inches). The columns to the right are the rates for different transit zones. Typically, the bigger the zone number, the longer the transit distance required for delivery, hence, the price goes up.

As an example, if your package dimension measures 10" x 9" x 9", the volume is calculated as 10 x 9 x 9 / 1728 = 0.47 cubic feet. Looking up the price chart, the cubic rates for zone 8 (e.g. from Los Angeles to New York) is $16.91 regardless of the package weight. Whether your package weighs 1 lb or 20 lbs, you pay $16.91. For the same package shipped using Priority Mail without cubic rates, it costs $7.85 for 1 lb and $63.40 for 20 lbs. It's clear that Cubic Pricing is the way to go if your package is heavy. Remember though, Cubic Pricing is only available if your shipping volume exceeds 50,000 packages annually so it's not for everyone.

The SolvingMaze Advanced Shipping Calculator supports Cubic Pricing for Priority Mail so you can take advantage of the favorable discounts in your shopping cart system such as Magento and start saving money on shipping. If you prefer to integrate the calculator to your own shopping cart, ERP or WMS application yourself, you can also use our Pack and Quote API. In addition to Cubic Pricing, the calculator also supports USPS Priority and Regional Flat Rate shipping as well as Commericial Plus Pricing so you may lower shipping costs even further.

For more ideas on how you can save shipping and streamline your order fulfillment process, check out our other articles.