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Whether you’re crafting homemade soap to send to a friend or reselling soap for your business, shipping bars of soap is a fairly easy process. Soap doesn’t contain any hazardous materials and isn’t perishable by nature. This means there are no restrictions when sending them, and you can use any shipping service you like. However, these shipments can be on the heavier side if you’re sending several of them at once, which is why it’s important to save as much money as you can when purchasing your shipping labels. Let’s get into it!
Table of Contents
- USPS is the Most Affordable Carrier for Shipping Bars of Soap
- Take Advantage of Free USPS Packaging
- Use a Dimension-Based Service Like USPS Priority Mail Cubic
- Save Money on Soap Shipments with Online Shipping Software
USPS is the Most Affordable Carrier for Shipping Bars of Soap
When choosing the shipping carrier for sending your soap, look no further than USPS. USPS is the premier carrier in the U.S. for sending smaller, lightweight packages, and will offer you the cheapest rates for these types of shipments. UPS is the next cheapest carrier for sending smaller shipments such as packages full of soap, but USPS will still often beat UPS pricing with its more affordable services such as USPS Ground Advantage.
When to Consider Shipping with UPS
While USPS typically is cheaper than UPS for these smaller shipments, we still suggest checking out UPS pricing to see if they may offer a better deal. UPS has been known to lower the pricing of UPS Ground shipments from time to time, and UPS also delivers packages much quicker than USPS. If speed is a factor in your shipment, it’s certainly something to consider.
Take Advantage of Free USPS Packaging
A surefire way to save money is to take advantage of the free packaging that USPS offers. USPS lists a variety of free Priority Mail packaging on their website that you can order at literally no cost to you! Once you order them on the USPS website, your local letter carrier will even deliver these boxes right to your front door. Of course, you can always walk into your local Post Office and grab Priority Mail packaging from there…but there’s no guarantee that the specific-sized box you’re looking for will be in stock.
Pro Tip: Sometimes the free Priority Mail boxes can be too big for your shipment, and you’re confined to the options that the Postal Service provides. If you’re looking for more boxes of all sizes, you can find them on Amazon. The ULINE website also has plenty of options for plain cardboard boxes.
Use a Dimension-Based Service Like USPS Priority Mail Cubic
Once you’ve got your soap loaded up in your boxes, it’s time to choose a USPS shipping service. Hands down, the cheapest service you’ll find for shipping bars of soap is USPS Priority Mail Cubic. Priority Mail Cubic is a specially discounted service that is priced based on the dimensions of your package and not its total weight. In fact, you can fill these shipments with up to 20 pounds of goods, and it won’t change the cost of shipping at all! That makes it the perfect service for sending smaller, heavier packages like boxes containing bars of soap.
The trick to unlocking the cheapest rates with Priority Mail Cubic is to make your packaging as small as possible. The smaller your box is, the cheaper it will be to ship it. For shipments containing bars of soap, this should be relatively easy, since a bar of soap itself is a tiny but dense item!
If you’ve never heard of Priority Mail Cubic before, you’re not alone. You’ll never find it at your local Post Office or on the USPS website. You’ll only be able to access Priority Mail Cubic through certain online shipping software options…which we’re going to talk about next.
Save Money on Soap Shipments with Online Shipping Software
As we said above, Priority Mail Cubic is only available when you use shipping software to buy discounted postage online. Shipping software companies sell postage from carriers like USPS and UPS at deep discounts that are typically only available for huge commercial shippers. When you sign up to buy postage through these companies, you automatically get access to those same discounts! For USPS, this tier of discounts is referred to as Commercial Pricing. In some cases, buying a shipping label at Commercial Pricing can save you up to 89% off what you’d pay to ship the same package at your local Post Office!
On top of the huge savings you’ll get, another convenient aspect of using shipping software to buy postage is that you can do so all from the comfort of your own home or office. You can buy and print the labels right from your computer, and you can even schedule free pickups for your packages that your letter carrier makes happen at the time when they usually deliver your mail. On top of saving tons of money through Commercial Pricing discounts, you can save time by totally skipping the lines at the Post Office!
Looking for the right shipping software for you?
To get the deepest discounts on all USPS shipping labels, check out our guide:
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