Parcel dimensioning minimizes freight costs for Packers Pro Shop

The Green Bay Packers are one of the most successful teams in NFL history, having won multiple Super Bowls and league championships. But, they differ from most other top teams in that they are based in a small city and are owned by fans through a publicly held non-profit corporation.

Another difference is rather than choosing a large company to manage their Pro Shop’s online fulfillment, the Packers employ local residents to run the operation. And, like any business with significant e-commerce operations, the Pro Shop needs to watch freight costs related to weight and dimension (or “dim”) charges on shipping. For the Pro Shop, that makes saving on freight costs an important win.

The Packers boast the NFL’s largest Pro Shop at 21,500 square feet. The store offers everything from jerseys and hats to foam cheeseheads, tailgating accessories and collectibles. For fans who cannot physically visit Lambeau Field, online shopping offers more than 15,000 items.

“We stay pretty busy all year,” says Tim Schroeder, manager of the Packers’ retail distribution center, “but it really ramps up in April through September and the holiday season.” Playoff years tend to increase online sales, adds Schroeder.

As each order is picked from the warehouse, it’s packed in a polybag or cardboard box, depending on the material and size of items in the order. Parcel dimensioning and weighing equipment (Rice Lake Weighing Systems) is key to holding down freight costs.

“The goal is to ship items safely in as small of a package as possible to save on shipping costs,” Schroeder explains. “We try to utilize our UPS SurePost contract whenever possible because it offers additional discounts.” UPS SurePost is the economy method of using the U.S. Mail for packages not exceeding 108 inches in total dimensions.

However, minimizing freight costs under SurePost is challenging with standard box sizes. Before implementing iDimension parcel dimensioners, the Pro Shop’s shipping department was using eight box sizes, each within UPS SurePost regulations.

Having these standard boxes enabled them to guarantee the shipment could mail with SurePost, but each associate packs differently, which resulted in significant unused or “dead” space within each box, leading to inefficient shipments. Furthermore, UPS notified them it would begin a new charging process based on dim weights.

The Packers needed a new game plan. They switched to a corrugate machine that cuts boxes to the exact size needed. They also implemented the dimensioners and BenchPro bench scales (Rice Lake) to verify exact dims and weights. Because UPS’ new charging process included chargebacks, the total dimensioning and weighing solution was able to save the Packers a significant amount of money each week.

For example, if a box was shipped with an actual weight of 4 pounds, but had a dimensional weight of 8 pounds, UPS would calculate the cost difference at each instance, summarize the weekly total, and divide it by the number of adjustments. This provided an average adjustment cost, which, if it exceeded $2, would be charged back to the Packers at full price.

“It could have added up to thousands of dollars per week if we didn’t stay under the $2 adjustment average,” Schroeder estimates. “With dimensioning, we now know the exact measurements of each custom box and can avoid these chargebacks. Having iDimension with the BenchPro scales reaffirms to us that, yes, this one can go SurePost or this one is a massive box such as a golf bag, which might be 3 pounds, but have an adjustment of $8. Now, we have exact dimensions, and we won’t have any adjustment on that. Weekly, I go through to see how many corrections we have compared to the total dollar amount, and we are staying well below the $2 average adjustment threshold.”

The first dimensioner, deployed in late 2018, worked so well the Pro Shop added a second unit in mid-2019. With the current process, manual errors still could bump a shipment from UPS SurePost to UPS Ground. When this occurs, the contract’s discount is lost.

As the department moves to new parcel shipping software, the second dimensioner with a BenchPro scale will capture measurements and weight and, through a PC interface, automatically select the best value shipping method and print a label—all in a matter of seconds with National Type Evaluation Program (NTEP) verified measurements.

The dimensioners and the scale fit easily into the Pro Shop packout area and are not hard for staff to learn and maintain. “The equipment is very easy to use, with little or no training required,” says Schroeder. “We have our staff manually quality check dimensions from time to time to ensure the dimensioners and BenchPro are in sync with our shipping software. Outside of that, I handle any recalibration issues, but those instances are few and far between.”