There are various methods to utilize ground delivery that still satisfy consumer expectations of speed. The way you structure your shipping procedure is determined by where you keep inventory, where your consumers are located, and other factors.
Here’s a brief rundown of how to expand your online business’s ground shipping coverage.
Choose your ground shipper carrier
The first step is to select which major shipping carrier(s) you want to work with for ground delivery. Here’s a closer look at the four most significant carriers in the United States.
UPS Ground Shipping
UPS Ground Shipping costs between $8.76 and $22.85 depending on packaging and size, with options for 1 to 5 days delivery. Extra-large shipments may cost up to around $22.85 to begin with. They also provide UPS Ground Delivery on Saturdays, allowing you to send items to your clients on the weekend.
For example, the map below shows how long it would take to transport orders across the United States using UPS.
FedEx Ground Shipping
FedEx Ground delivers packages to destinations within the continental United States for a flat rate of $11. FedEx offers 1-5 business days shipping from states sharing a common border, with delivery days Monday through Friday. They can transport packages weighing up to 150 pounds, 108 inches in length, and 165 inches in length and girth.
FedEx is popular for business since it offers low-cost, efficient shipping. FedEx offers competitively priced services (starting at around $8.90), allowing ecommerce companies to optimize their delivery. If you’re shipping things from the Chicago region via FedEx, see the map below for estimated arrival times based on zones.
DHL Ground Shipping
The process gets a little more complicated when DHL is involved. They provide domestic shipping for consumers who ship a significant number of items within the United States. DHL can be an excellent alternative for ecommerce firms that send dangerous goods across borders or to locations all over the world.
DHL is a multinational corporation headquartered in Germany that specializes in worldwide shipping, making delivery across borders more feasible. They also provide DHL Express Worldwide, which guarantees next-day delivery to any country (of course, not via ground shipping).
To give you a better idea of how DHL Ground works, we’ve prepared maps of European nations highlighting various ground shipping zones.
USPS Ground Shipping
The United States Postal Service (USPS) provides a variety of shipping alternatives. One of the most popular USPS delivery options is Priority Mail, which takes 1-3 business days to deliver. However, USPS Retail Ground delivers items in 1-8 business days at a lower cost than Priority Mail.
The cost to ship an item via USPS Retail Ground is $7.70. The delivery times for items sent from the Chicago region are shown on the map below.
Partner up with a 3PL like Launch Fulfillment
Launch Fulfillment works with all of the major ground shipping carriers, including local carriers (and fulfills orders for thousands of merchants across a number of industries and countries), making shipping operations more cost-effective and efficient – whether you use ground transportation or alternative methods.
Launch Fulfillment negotiates lower shipping rates by collaborating with all major carriers as well as local carriers. As a result, you may save money on delivery while still offering a wider selection of options to your consumers.
With a 3PL like Launch Fulfillment, rather than keeping inventory in one warehouse, you may simply distribute it among several warehouses, reducing transit times and making shipping via ground inexpensive.
Leave shipping and fulfillment to the experts
If you’re taking orders in-house, ensuring quick and inexpensive delivery is difficult.
With a 3PL, you may delegate time-consuming logistics activities to the professionals. Rather than investing time and money into warehousing and technology, you may outsource fulfillment to a 3PL and automate shipping instead.
We work with all major shipping carriers to offer low rates and the opportunity to expand your distribution network throughout the United States or even internationally.
With Launch Fulfillment, you can lower your shipping expenses, increase transit speeds, and enhance your retail supply chain by gaining access to advanced data and analytics reporting tools that can help you make better judgments.
Here’s a summary of how Launch Fulfillment may help you improve your ecommerce fulfillment strategy.
Distributed fulfillment network
Based on demand, supply chain professionals can use Launch Fulfillment’s global fulfillment network to quickly allocate inventory in the most profitable locations. You may determine which markets to store inventory in and optimize inventory allocation based on previous buy history, which helps to keep storage costs low.
2-day delivery via ground is only possible if inventory is split correctly across locations. Customers may use 2-day shipping via ground through Ground Shipping for Small Items. Launch Fulfillment gives you data to help you decide where to distribute your products most effectively across our network as your business grows.
Integrations with your store(s)
When working with Launch Fulfillment, we make it simple to connect your online shop. Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, WooCommerce, Square, and more are all connected directly by Launch Fulfillment. We also make it simple to implement a multichannel retail plan with marketplace connections such as Walmart and Amazon.
Orders placed through our website will be sent to the nearest fulfillment center where they can be picked, packed, and sent.
You may keep track of inventory in real time, see orders by status, forecast demand and much more — all from one dashboard because our entire distribution network is run by our best-in-class, proprietary technology.