Perishable food supplies and Dry Ice shipments are usually challenging for online business owners. Packing, selecting the appropriate service, delivering the goods without damage, and a host of other problems might arise.
Regardless of the product you sell and ship, it must arrive at its destination in good shape, as well as being fresh and free of any potential infection. It goes without saying that having your food arrive in bad condition will cost your business clients and money.
However, this procedure may be improved with the use of suitable carriers, such as FedEx. All you need to do is pack your product properly and make sure you create the necessary shipping labels informing FedEx that the package contains perishable items and requires special handling because the majority of FedEx services support sending perishable goods.
You should be aware of some crucial shipping advice for frozen goods before getting involved with delivering perishables.
Points to Consider when Shipping Frozen Items
A shipment of frozen food is unlike any other cargo. Before completing any orders if you’re just starting off, you should usually think about the following difficulties.
- Extreme temperature ranges: You are sending frozen meals, thus low or high temperatures will have an impact on the food’s composition. If the food isn’t adequately wrapped, then this can be a serious problem.
- Humidity and moisture: The meals/products you transport may suffer significantly from high humidity. Food spoiling may occur more quickly as a result, and by the time your customers receive them, they may already be terrible.
- Packaging: To prevent deterioration as much as possible while delivery, your frozen food must be carefully wrapped. You want to think about the ideal container for your items. Something with insulation is what we advise.
How to Pack your Frozen Items the Right Way?
It’s crucial to make sure that your frozen food is properly packaged and chilled before it is transported. Keep in mind the following packing advice for cold and frozen foods:
Wrap frozen items properly: First, you should seal your frozen food products in waterproof plastic bags, especially if they are likely to leak in the event of shipping damage. For further security, you may also wrap the waterproof plastic bags with bubble wrap.
Choose the right insulated box: For the frozen item and the delivery box, you should consider an insulated box. This justification stems from your desire to prevent the movement of your frozen food item within the shipping container during travel. Additionally, an insulated package for the frozen food item guarantees that it will stay chilled during transportation.
Fill the shipment container with the frozen items: Place your frozen item now inside the transportation box in its insulated container. To guarantee that your frozen object stays cold during the next process, you should add any cushioning or coolant elements.
Place dry ice in the insulated box: Gel packs and dry ice are essential for delivering frozen food. Gel packs are better for foods you want to keep cool but not frozen during transportation, whereas dry ice is better for items you want to maintain frozen during transit.
If you transport frozen items using dry ice, be careful to inquire about any shipping restrictions with your selected courier. Because dry ice is regarded as dangerous, shipping companies must adhere to specific rules when using it as packaging material.
Include the proper labels and then close the box: After completing the preceding procedures for shipping frozen food, you may now close your box. Before you seal your shipping container, make sure your frozen item is surrounded by enough coolant packaging materials.Once you have finished these steps, attach any necessary shipping labels to your shipment box.
Ideal Methods to Ship Frozen Items
It’s critical for internet retailers to comprehend how to send frozen goods by courier without risking their integrity. In general, there are several strategies to overcome these significant obstacles, including:
Express courier services are an ideal choice
For delivering frozen food goods, you should think about choosing a fast courier service because ground delivery services can take up to nearly 10 business days, depending on the delivery location.
If a business chooses a normal delivery service, there is a chance that their frozen food products may deteriorate and their customers will be dissatisfied. Consider using expedited shipping services like FedEx First Overnight to make sure your frozen food item arrives fresh.
Use suitable shipment containers and boxes
The following packaging should be used to ship frozen food in order to keep it frozen throughout transportation:
- Containers for carrying food that insulate, like Styrofoam
- Sheets of Styrofoam
- Air-filled Insulated Liners, Insulated Liners, and Insulated Pads
It is ideal to select a shipping container that is just a little bit larger than your item, allowing for the addition of ice packs or dry ice to maintain cool shipping conditions.
Do not cheap out while packing frozen food
Because frozen foods can deteriorate whereas non-perishable goods cannot, shipping frozen foods differs from shipping non-perishable foods. This fact alone demonstrates the need of using the right packaging supplies to prevent any harm or deterioration during shipment. Think of using packaging materials like these:
- packets of gel
- plastic watertight bags
- boxes made of sturdy corrugated cardboard
- Dry ice
Shipments of frozen foods must be cooled adequately
Shippers must safeguard your cargo of frozen food goods using frozen gel packs and other packing materials like bubble wrap. Use enough dry ice and frozen gel packs to properly pack your frozen food shipments. Always check for airflow in the box or container before using dry ice.
Use one pound of gel pack for every three pounds of meat as a general guideline. If possible, use two bags to protect seafood from extremely cold or hot conditions. Additionally, products that are prone to leaking should be packaged in watertight plastic.
Which FedEx Shipping Service is Ideal?
To ship food products, you should generally go with the quickest shipping option. However, the cost of using these ultra-rapid shipping services is typically high, thus it is definitely not worthwhile to spend a lot of money on delivering anything that isn’t worth much.
In comparison to FedEx Standard Overnight or any other FedEx Overnight service, the FedEx 2-Day service will cost you less. Therefore, you might choose FedEx 2 Day if you think your food goods can easily withstand the 2-day journey. That does not, however, imply that you should not select a much speedier service, such as FedEx First Overnight.
So it all relies on your shipping selection. In addition, FedEx Express services have the ability to transport Dry Ice and are also rather quick. You may evaluate them side by side to determine which is best for you.
In addition, the shelf-life of the cargo will affect the necessity for necessary delivery service. Therefore, you might need to select a different service depending on whether you need to keep the food products frozen or refrigerated. Finding the fastest delivery option that will nonetheless guarantee the item’s safe arrival is the recommended course of action in this situation.
How to Save Cost While Shipping Frozen Items?
There is no set price for the expense of transporting frozen, perishable food from one place to another. The distance, time, weight, and kind of frozen food you’re trying to transport all have a role in how much money you’ll spend on delivering your items.
The amount of dry ice and packing gel you’ll need will depend on the weight of your items and the distance they need to travel before being delivered, so keep that in mind as well.
It’s essential to thoroughly assess the materials necessary to send frozen food appropriately and the additional service expenses your carrier may charge in order to determine how to ship frozen food affordably. A useful tip to keep in mind is to try and ship items in bulk as it saves the cost of shipping multiple times.
Now that we have an idea about shipping frozen items, let us take a look at a plugin that can help make this process easier.
A little About the Plugin
You may provide real-time shipping quotes for USPS, UPS, FedEx, UPS DAP, UPS SurePost, and Canada Post with the ELEX EasyPost (FedEx, UPS, Canada Post & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce.
It allows you to print mailing labels, provide estimated arrival times, track shipments, set up USPS Flat rate boxes, and design bespoke shipping box packing choices.
Utilizing EasyPost APIs, the plugin enables you to fully automate WooCommerce UPS, WooCommerce USPS, WooCommerce FedEx, and WooCommerce Canada Post shipping by showing shipping costs on the cart/checkout page, allowing you to purchase postage, and allowing you to print labels from within your WooCommerce Store.
Crucial Features:
- In order to provide clients flexibility, FedEx offers a variety of billing choices like third-party billing.
- Give your customers a rough idea of how many days it will take to receive their order at the specified delivery location.
- Customers and store owners may track their shipments.
- The rate will be calculated and added to the total cost of the order based on the weights and dimensions of the package.
- Set up handling charges—either a fixed amount or a percentage of the value—for each shipping service.
- A shop administrator can choose different services for each package in an order that includes numerous items.
- Provide EasyPost Shipping Insurance.
- Plan a pickup for FedEx, UPS, USPS, and Canada Post.
- You may create shipping labels in mass and download them as one PDF file with the EasyPost Bulk Label Printing Add-On.
Once you install and access the plugin dashboard on your WooCommerce site, you will find a bunch of tabs and features that are necessary to enable the plugin and work efficiently.
For the sake of simplicity, we will be sticking to the dry ice shipping process. If you wish to go through the plugin details and better understand its usability, check out the article, WooCommerce FedEx Shipping Method Extension using EasyPost – How to Setup.
Shipping Frozen Items with Dry Ice Using FedEx
The process is extremely simple and will barely take a few seconds of your time. Once the required settings are enabled and you are done configuring the plugin with crucial information, you may begin the process of shipping frozen items.
You can activate the dry ice option on the particular product pages if you are selling items that must remain frozen until they arrive at the customer’s door. When you choose to pack the items individually (Select Pack Items Individually in the Packaging tab), this option is only accessible for FedEx services.
You may click Edit beneath the particular product under WordPress Dashboard > Products, then go down to the Shipping tab in the Product Data meta box. Once there, turn on the “Require Dry Ice” checkbox to send the item with dry ice.
FedEx will provide the entire charge for the item, including the cost of the dry ice, when you start the shipment.
Conclusion
It’s critical to transport perishable, frozen, or cold foods properly to ensure that they reach their destination fresh and free of any dangerous contamination. FedEx delivering frozen food is both doable and incredibly easy if you follow the right packaging and shipping guidelines and take care of any other requirements.
Dry Ice shipping is still possible despite several limitations if you use FedEx. You just need to adhere to the requirements outlined in this post. Moreover, the ELEX plugin previously stated is ideal for the job when it comes to producing FedEx shipping labels.
