How to effectively handle shipping for heavy pottery and light t-shirts?

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Handling mixed shipping needs for heavy pottery and light t‑shirts. The store currently uses a default 12"×6"×6" box at 4 lb but wants cheaper options for t‑shirts.

Key suggestions:

  • Create separate Custom Shipping Profiles: one for heavy pottery and one for t‑shirts, each with its own rates.
  • Use weight-based rate tiers across products, or distinct profiles by category. Dimensional weight (carrier pricing based on size and weight) requires apps that calculate live carrier rates.

Store owner actions/notes:

  • Set a distinct profile for t‑shirts and entered a custom rate after comparing USPS options; Ground Advantage was too high and First Class is no longer available.
  • Currently prefers manual (own) rates over carrier-calculated, using USPS website estimates and shipping only within the USA.
  • Asked whether Shopify always uses the default package at checkout; observed quotes seem tied to the default package despite multiple package settings.

Clarifications:

  • For precise rates, Carrier-Calculated Rates (CCR) must be enabled on the plan; Shopify Basic does not include CCR.
  • A pragmatic approach suggested is to ignore dimensions and price by weight for approximate checkout rates.

Status: Partially resolved. Manual rates and separate profiles are in place; CCR/dimensional-rate apps remain an option if upgrading/adding CCR.

Summarized with AI on January 20. AI used: gpt-5.
3

Hello @Felbz ,

The simplest approach for you would be to set up weight configurations for all products and establish rates for each weight range.

Alternatively, you could generate distinct shipping profiles based on various product categories.

If you’re aiming for more precise shipping costs involving dimensional weight, you might need to consider using an application that can compute carrier-calculated rates for your chosen shipping provider, while also accommodating dimensional weight calculations.

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