osCommerce, UPS Freight?

How to handle shipping large freight?

[shs_cmcl]

I'm building an osCommerce store for a client, but only after they signed up with us and I got almost halfway through creating the store did they tell me that they are planning on shipping large, pallet-size orders out, using their UPS freight account. This is in addition to the smaller, normal-sized orders of their products. I was planning to use the UPSXML Rates & Services contribution for osC for calculating shipping charges at the time of checkout, since I've used it before and I know it works relatively well. I don't see any shipping module contributions that deal with UPS Freight (over 150 lbs., pallets, "classes" etc.) though, and it doesn't even look like there's a UPS Rates & Services tool for that anyway.

What should I do about their large orders? They will absolutely NOT switch to FedEx, though I know there's a FedEx Freight contrib somewhere out there. Bite the bullet and tell them to add shipping charges into the prices? Maybe some sort of zone-based shipping setup based on the weight of the order? It's the only thing I can think of at this point; they're going to use PayPal as the merchant so going back and charging their credit card once they've calculated the freight charges won't be an option. Plus they were thrilled when I told them the cart would calculate their UPS charges for them (this was before they dropped the bomb that they expect to ship several-hundred-pound pallet orders).

How do other online stores handle shipping charges on large-freight orders? I tried asking directly on the osCommerce forums a few weeks ago, but got zero responses.

[Mpr3ssive]

We're using creloaded version of oscommerce and we ship large freight items all the time. We don't use FedEx freight or any other common carrier but we use a white glove delivery company. The shipping fees are based on weight and zones for this company, so we used the multi vendor shipping contribution for it and set those large items as zones shipping. Works like a charm at the rates are always exact.

Since no one that I know of has come up with a contribution for UPS freight, I would suggest that you use the zones. It may not be exact, but it's the best thing you can use since your client doesn't want to use FedEx freight.