Have you ever wondered why your shipping cost is so high when ordering a lightweight pillow? While most people still believe that shipping is based on the actual weight of a product, this is no longer the case. There’s a relatively new shipping procedure involved in the change, and you’ll be amazed how dimensional weight affects shipping.

Dimensional weight is a pricing technique used by shipping carriers to estimate the weight based off the dimensions of the package (not the actual weight of the box and the contents). Typically, carriers will calculate shipping using the greater weight between the dimensional weight and the actual weight. While carriers have been using this technique on extremely large packages since 2007, the major US carriers implemented this technique across all packages in 2015.

To put this all in perspective, it will cost 33% more to ship a case of 18” x 18” pillow than to ship three 5-pound hand weights. If we didn’t vacuum seal our pillow forms, it would be 80% more expensive to ship the pillows over the weights. (Now you understand why we vacuum seal those pillow inserts!) Given that the box of weights and the box of pillows weigh about the same, you may be thinking that this shipping technique is completely unfair.  

It’s important to understand the shipping industry to understand this change in shipping costs. For a very long time, shipping was primarily based on the weight of the object. However, as online shopping has increased, the demand for space in shipping carriers has increased tremendously. With space in high demand, large boxes that don’t weigh much became less profitable in the weight-based system and led to a change.

This new era of shipping is why you’ll increasingly find decorative pillow sellers that provide the cover and not the pillow. Other than leaving the market, pillow manufacturers (or anyone selling light but large goods) will have to adapt by compressing their goods or using smaller packaging. At PillowCubes, we have a unique and successful technique for compressing our pillows (with dimensions at 26 inches or smaller), and we can offer the best pricing on quantities that completely fill common box sizes. We feel the pain with you and try to do everything possible on our end to provide an amazing product at a great price.