How to Calculate Distances for Shipping?

Transportation forms the backbone of most industries in the present times. Whether you have a B2B or B2C business model, a smooth and well-connected logistics and transportation chain always helps a business to go a long way. Freight shipping forms an essential aspect of transporting commodities and involves the use of air, water, or land to deliver goods and cargo from one place to another. Freight costs can make a great deal of difference to your overall product cost and consequently, your profit margin. To prepare a sound financial plan, it is necessary to get the right estimate of distance for calculating the freight costs. Top shipping Distance Calculator allows you to do the same while at the same time, helping you to optimize the entire freight process for quicker deliveries and better costs. 

Distance is shipping costs

Distance is an essential factor in calculating freight costs. Transit time is the measure of the total time taken for the shipment to reach its final destination from a specific pickup point. The time which is utilized in moving goods from one place to another varies according to the distance and facilities available. Hence, it becomes important to get a prior estimate of the transit time while calculating the distance and freight cost. 

International freight

Coming to the concept of international freight, which is more complicated than local freights. The two points picked up for pickup and delivery have to be verified for exact information and there are a variety of political and legal factors that come into the spotlight. An international freight shipping calculator can be of great use for you as it allows you to get a quote on request, thus enabling you to plan your expenses. 

Time is taken for shipping 

The transit time for freight shipping depends upon a variety of factors like distance, route, shipping mode, and even the season. Roughly speaking, an express can take as less as 2-3 days to ship while air freight takes a long time because of the multiplicity of formalities. Sea shipping, however, is the longest as it takes almost a month to 45 days for the goods to ship. 

With the onset of a pandemic, every industry has been hit severely with reduced business which is reflected in the freight costs of the current year. With the rates of the spot market shooting up, it has become extremely essential to plan your expenses concerning freight and transportation. The pandemic has pushed a greater load of freight to the spot market, which has caused a surge in the charges. On the contrary, the spot market capacity has tightened while the total number of drivers has also gone down. All this calls for a smart freight strategy which is the work of an expert. 

Optimizing your packaging 

Once you are aware of the distance between two points and the estimated freight costs, other significant steps can be taken to avert excess costs without meddling with the safety and security of the goods being delivered. 

• Check the packaging

Often, we make mistakes while packaging the goods and as a result of it, the load increases without any significant increase in the safety of the load. Always go for a blanket wrap instead of shrink-wrap and use a wooden crate for a full-proof packaging. While packaging, always packs your load for ground transportation. Hereby, your standard LTL service will not be including air-ride suspension trucks which means you can easily expect your stuff to bend or move during shipping. Hence, strong insulation can prevent you from incurring losses.

• A peek into the packaging weight

While calculating the freight costs, it is not just the load that is taken into account but also the packaging dimensions. If you are a novice, do not make the mistake of ignoring the packaging weight and dimensions. Taking the dimensions of packaged freight and the weight of the commodities will also help you to calculate the rate beforehand since these factors do affect the freight shipping quotes. For this purpose, you can hire a service that has all these factors as presets. This reduces the extra efforts needed to decide what factors should be taken into account for freight charges. All you are required to do is enter the right values.

• Cross-checking the facilities at the destination 

For fair freight costs, it is important to check facilities not just at the place of departure but also at the place of arrival. For instance, you will need to verify if the place is in a commercial zone or residential zone and if there is an availability of a loading dock. In addition to this, you will also need to ensure if the business requires an appointment or not because all of it will affect the freight costs. 

If there is no loading dock, you will need a liftgate to deliver the load which will add to the net freight amount. Taking account of the above things can help you calculate an accurate freight cost based on shipping distance. 

To optimize your freight costs, always plan your shipment in a manner that goods which are headed in the same direction are clubbed as a single shipment. This will reduce the duplicity of efforts and you shall be able to optimize your time as well as money involved. 

Distance is undoubtedly a deciding factor for freight costs and transit time. Coupled with the packaging costs and added charges of services like liftgate, it accounts for the freight costs in totality. In the current times, when the world faces a global concern that has affected most businesses adversely, a smart planner freight cost can help you maintain your product costs and profitability. 

Hiring a professional service can be extremely beneficial and yield results in the short run. You can take the assistance of experts to plan your freight and transit costs while taking notes of areas where the cost can be cut or optimized.