A carrier relationship that solved a real reliability problem, then kept being applied to orders it was no longer the right answer for.
Anonymized to protect customer confidentiality
Ready-to-drink beverage manufacturer
Outcome
Average label cost
$15.57 → $13.59
First month
$6,000+
Carrier decision
Per order, not standing
Also covers · Multi-package Optimization
A ready-to-drink beverage manufacturer selling millions of cans a year, with a direct-to-consumer channel running on ShipStation and a thin operations team.
Canned beverages are an unusually punishing parcel profile. The product is heavy, which makes it expensive, and it is delicate, which makes damage and re-ships expensive in a second, less visible way.
The operation had been through genuine reliability problems with parcel providers — damages, and insufficient support when things went wrong. It resolved this by consolidating onto a single carrier relationship that performed well and came with a level of partnership a small operations team could actually lean on.
That was a correct decision, and it is worth being clear that it solved the problem it was chosen to solve. What it did not solve was cost. Every online order went to the same carrier regardless of whether that carrier was the right answer for that particular parcel and destination.
The result is a specific and common pattern: a good decision, made for good reasons, applied indiscriminately because applying it selectively would have required per-order comparison the team had no capacity for.
ShipStation was doing what it was configured to do, and the configuration reflected a deliberate operational choice rather than an oversight.
The limitation was that the platform offered no way to programmatically select the least-cost qualifying option per order. The choice available was a standing rule — this carrier, this service — not a per-order evaluation of which of several qualifying services was actually cheapest for that shipment.
This matters more for heavy goods than for light ones. As cubic weight rises, the spread between service tiers widens, and the cost of applying one service to everything grows with it. The same standing rule that costs a light-parcel operation very little costs a beverage operation a great deal.
The decisions that had to interact for this to improve without giving up the carrier relationship:
The partnership was never the problem and was not disturbed. What changed is that it stopped being the answer to a question nobody was asking per order. The carrier still wins the orders it should win — it simply has to win them.
Average label cost fell from $15.57 to $13.59, and the first month returned more than $6,000.
Order processing time also came down, which for a thin operations team is the change that is felt daily. Carrier selection stopped being a standing decision that someone had to own and periodically defend.
There was a commercial effect the team valued beyond the direct saving: once every order is priced across carriers, carriers compete for the volume continuously rather than holding it by default. The rate structure improved because it was being tested.
"String has not only allowed us to take full advantage of our current parcel rate structures but has also helped us improve them. We have parcel carriers now fighting for our business while we are enjoying lowered order processing times!"
What another operator can take from this review, whether or not their operation looks anything like this one.
A carrier consolidation that solved a service problem is not automatically the right answer to a cost question. Both can be true and they need separate review.
The cost of applying one service to everything scales with weight. Heavy and dimensional goods punish standing rules far harder than light ones.
Orders routinely qualify for cheaper service tiers that a standing rule will never select, because the rule was written before those tiers were relevant.
Pricing every order across carriers changes your commercial position, not just your postage line. Carriers compete differently for volume they can lose.
Other operational reviews
Cartonization
4 min
A packing process that depended on the judgement of whoever reviewed orders that day. The judgement was good. The dependency was the problem.
Rate Selection
4 min
The team knew their rules were mis-allocating orders when they built them. They built them anyway, because the alternative did not scale.
Exception Monitoring
4 min
Rules made fulfilment faster and, at the same time, removed the human check that used to notice when an order never actually shipped.
Start here
A short conversation, an export of your order data, and a String Operational Review you keep — along with an honest answer about whether String can meaningfully improve your fulfillment operation. If it can't, we'll tell you. That answer requires a detailed review by us and could save you a year of building the wrong solution.
