ization has now been pushed back to them, and most are not
yet prepared to manage the function,” they said.
One group that appears to be especially concerned about
the impact is smaller shippers, who lack the volume clout
to leverage carrier relationships to their benefit. “When we
visit with smaller shippers and ask about logistics issues, dim
weight pricing is typically the first topic they mention,” the
authors said.
PARCEL SHIPPERS MORE PROACTIVE
The survey was fairly balanced among users of the two modes,
with 43 percent saying they shipped mostly with parcel carriers, 37 percent saying they shipped primarily with LTL carriers, and the remaining 20 percent split down the middle.
Parcel shippers have responded more rapidly than have
LTL shippers to the carriers’ pricing changes, according to the
survey. About 65 percent of parcel shippers have made some
adjustments to their packaging, compared with 34 percent of
LTL shippers. Only 42 percent of respondents who identified
themselves as LTL shippers had done anything in response to
the dim weight initiative, according to the survey.
Most LTL shipper respondents to the survey said they
weren’t comfortable with the carriers’ dimensioning concepts
or with the equipment being used to perform the measurements. The unease was expressed by both the experienced and
the relative novice: Some 27 percent of the more-knowledge-able respondents said they were comfortable tendering their
freight for dimensioning; about 36 percent of the less-knowl-edgeable group said they were comfortable with the practice.
A cluster of the comments focused on criticisms of the
equipment and the way it’s used. One respondent mentioned
that “dimensional pricing can be completely skewed by a
minor change” in the process.
Clark Skeen, president of Quantronix, the Farmington,
Utah-based maker of the popular “CubiScan” dimensioning
product line, said palletized shipments are often asymmetrical
in dimension and come in multiple shapes and sizes. This, in
turn, can make it difficult for even today’s equipment to capture an accurate scan, he said.
“There are systems on the market that are robust, reliable,
and consistent,” Skeen said in an e-mail. But users need to look
closely at the performance records of any system, and in the
meantime, take vendor claims with a grain of salt, he added.
Ampuja and Kling said customer complaints should fade
once dimensioning systems are harmonized and eventually
perfected. They emphasized that shippers who invest in better
packaging processes will, over time, reap the benefits of lower
pricing on their package and LTL consignments.
However, shippers with a lot of low-density freight or with
inefficient packaging models face a more long-lasting problem, namely a hit to their budgets as dimensioning forces
them to pay more for shipping, they wrote. Businesses that
simply can’t change the configurations of their products “will
not find any easy solutions to the higher rates associated with
dimensional weight pricing,” they said.
