Pull up your last freight invoice and set it beside the weight printed on the boxes. The numbers will not match, and the gap is not a billing error. It is how parcel freight has worked for years, and in 2026 it costs more than it did last year.
Why a 31-pound box can be billed as a 65-pound box
Parcel carriers charge on billable weight, which is whichever is greater: what the box actually weighs, or its dimensional weight — a figure derived from the space it occupies. Length times width times height in inches, divided by 139. Both FedEx and UPS use that divisor for domestic ground in 2026, and FedEx applies it to any package over 1,728 cubic inches, roughly a twelve-inch cube.
Almost every case of medical supplies clears that trigger, and it does not hit them all the same way. Here is what it does across our own catalogue:
| Case | Actual weight | Billable weight | You pay for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30cc packer bottles, 2,000 | 31 lb | 65 lb | 2.1× |
| 60cc packer bottles, 1,000 | 21 lb | 44 lb | 2.2× |
| 45cc packer bottles, 1,500 | 29 lb | 44 lb | 1.5× |
| 28-400 closures, 2,000 | 24 lb | 24 lb | 1.0× |
| 32-400 closures, 2,000 | 36 lb | 36 lb | 1.0× |
Look at the last two rows against the first two. Closures bill at their actual weight. Bottles bill at more than double it. Closures are small and dense, so the box is mostly plastic. A bottle is a container with nothing in it yet, so the box is mostly air — and air is what dimensional weight prices.
This is the single most useful thing to understand about freight on medical supplies. You are not paying to ship weight. You are paying to ship space, and no amount of negotiating changes the arithmetic.
What changed in 2026
Both carriers raised rates 5.9% on average. FedEx effective 5 January, UPS effective 26 January, with accessorial charges moving a few weeks earlier. A general rate increase is an average, so the increase on any given lane can be higher.
Enforcement tightened. Both carriers have expanded automated dimension measurement at sortation hubs, and both apply correction charges more consistently when scanned dimensions differ from what was declared. A carton that was quietly under-measured for years is now measured every time it moves.
Accessorials rose. FedEx Additional Handling now runs from $29.50 in zone 2 to $40.75 in zone 7 and beyond. Residential delivery on Ground and Home Delivery is $6.45. Declared value went from $1.50 to $1.65 per $100. Remote area delivery is $16.50.
Worth knowing for planning purposes: none of the case sizes above trigger Additional Handling. They sit under the 10,368 cubic inch threshold and under 50 pounds actual. The dimensional weight is the cost driver here, not the surcharges.
Three things that actually reduce the bill
Order full cases. Split cases get repacked into cartons with worse cube efficiency, and you pay dimensional weight on the void. Suppliers sell by the full case for this reason, and the per-unit price reflects it.
Consolidate. Four cartons moving together on one shipment cost less than four cartons moving separately across a quarter. If your reorder pattern is driven by whoever notices the shelf is low, the freight line is paying for that.
Ask which zone you ship from. Zone is the largest variable in a ground rate after weight. A supplier holding stock in one location serves half the country at a long zone. We stock in California and Georgia and ship from whichever is closer, which is a freight decision before it is a service decision.
What we changed
Ground shipping is now free on orders over $250, anywhere in the continental United States. No promotional window, no code, no end date.
Most reorders clear it without trying. A case of drug screen cups is past $250 on its own, and a case of bottles with a case of closures is $280.
If you want to know what your current freight is actually costing you, take one invoice, find the billable weight, and compare it to the weight of the boxes. The difference is the number this article is about.
— Med Supply Lab
