What is Gross Weight?
The gross weight is the total chargeable weight of a packaged shipment. It includes the product weight, buffers weight, and other necessary accessory weight. The pricing levied by a shipping company is based on the gross weight and transit distance. While net weight encompasses the container weight, gross weight negates the mentioned inclusion.
Significance of Gross Weight in an E-commerce Shipping and Delivery
Gross weight ideally allows shipping companies to abide by the weight limitation laws placed by different governments. Furthermore, as a globally accepted form of weight calculation, gross weight ensures the mitigation of pricing confusion.
- Abiding by legal restrictions: Containers and freight allows sellers to move products in bulk. However, every country has a gross weight limitation in place. In the Philippines, road transport is forbidden to carry more than 24,000 kgs for 20’GP. Shipping companies use gross weight to quote prices to abide by the mentioned limitations.
- Pay what you use: Gross price in shipping is determined based on gross weight. Therefore, the seller is not required to pay by the product volume but by gross weight.
Prerequisites of Gross Weight and How It Works
The calculation of gross weight in e-commerce depends on the total weight of the products, buffer, and other packed accessories. Gross weights are used in two different ways.
- Gross weight calculation by the seller: In this case, the gross weight is calculated per the mentioned procedure.
- Container gross weight calculation: The gross weight of a container is calculated by adding up the individual chargeable weights of all the packages in it. Shipping companies compute this to abide by the mentioned laws.
Use Case With Gross Weight
A seller opts to ship 50 units of mugs to Chiang Mai. These mugs were wrapped with bubble wrap that weighed .0922 grams. As the mugs individually weighed 1.1 Kilos each, the gross weight of one unit was 1.1000922 kg. Therefore the total gross weight for 50 mugs was 55.00461kg instead of 55 kg.