The courier industry has never been more efficient. Which means it’s never been easier to send a parcel to any address within Australia and have it delivered in a timely fashion. International shipping is also simpler and swifter than ever before.
Most major courier companies in Australia can guarantee interstate delivery in just a couple days. Best of all, there is no need for you to lug your package to the nearest post office or courier drop-off point. Instead, you can arrange for a driver to come to your house and take the parcel off your hands at no additional cost to you.
Whether you’re running a small e-commerce business out of your home or sending a birthday gift to a family member, it pays to take full advantage of the services offered by modern couriers. In addition, you can use a quote comparison tool to compare various shipping options and find the one that suits you best. By doing so you’ll save time, money, and stress.
Having said that, it is still incumbent upon you to properly box your items. You should also understand how to calculate things like length, girth, and volumetric weight, as courier companies may request these measurements during the booking process. We’ll demonstrate how to do it in this article.
Length and girth
Services like courier Dubbo oftentimes use length and girth as metrics to help calculate shipping costs. In some circumstances you are obliged to provide these figures. Alternatively, you may be asked for the combined length and girth.
What are length and girth?
Let’s begin with the easy part: length, as you probably already know, is the longest side of your box. Pure and simple.
What about girth? If you were to measure around the middle of your box, the resulting number would be its girth. It’s akin to a tailor measuring a client’s waistline. The thinner the box, the smaller its girth will be.
Fortunately, you can determine girth using a simple calculation that doesn’t involve attempting to wrap a tape measure around your package.
Calculating girth is easy. There are two methods.
First method: measure the four shortest sides of your box. Then add them together. Voila-there’s your girth.
And the second method of determining girth: measure your package’s width and height. Add them together. Multiply the sum by 2. Voila again-girth. Here is the equation:
Width + Height x 2 = Girth
Let’s have an example. Suppose you’ve got a package with the following dimensions: 35cm x 25cm x 15cm
This theoretical package has a width and height of 25cm and 15cm respectively. We calculate its girth like so:
Remember to multiply before adding!
Combined length and girth
Finding a package’s combined length and girth is a cinch. First, measure the length. After that, calculate the girth. Add these numbers together. Now you have your combined length and girth which, to repeat, plays a large part in determining the cost of shipping your package.
Now let’s look at another critical metric frequently used by shipping companies: volumetric weight.
Volumetric weight
Volumetric weight, in spite of its name, refers to a package’s size, not its weight. As with combined length and girth, the idea is to determine how much space a package takes up while in transit.
In some cases, a courier will compare volumetric weight to actual weight and use the larger figure to calculate shipping costs. It all depends on the company.
Calculating volumetric weight
If you want to calculate the volumetric weight of a package, you must first measure its length, width, and height in centimetres.
As we know, the length is the longest side of a box, the width is the next longest, and the height is the shortest. In many cases, the width and height of a package are identical. And needless to say, if your package is a perfect square, length, width and height are all interchangeable.
Okay, so you’ve measured the length, width, and height of your parcel. Here’s the equation for volumetric weight:
L x W x H / 5000 (rounded up to the nearest 0.5kg)
Take, for instance, a package that is 40 cm in length, 30 cm in width, and 15 cm in height. Let’s figure out the volumetric weight using the above formula.
40 x 30 x 20 / 5000 = 4.8
Rounding up to the nearest 0.5kg, we come up with a volumetric weight of 5kg.
As we noted above, shipping providers commonly take a parcel’s volumetric weight on one hand and its actual weight on the other. Whichever number is larger is then used to determine the cost of shipping.
Now you know the two main variables courier companies use to calculate shipping costs-and how to figure them out on your own.
Before selecting a courier service to deliver your parcel, take a few minutes to compare prices and delivery speeds. Several websites have tools that help you do this in no more than a couple minutes. Happy shipping.