Cat Litter and Kibble Freight Optimization: Cutting DIM Cost on Your Heaviest SKUs

Cat litter and kibble are heavy and take up a lot of room, so they make up much of a pet brand's shipping bill. These can potentially bring that cost down:

• a parcel box sized to the bag, so you aren't billed for empty space
• freight arranged on our negotiated carrier rates
• LTL or full truckload for the heaviest moves
• if you choose to split your stock across our warehouses, shipping each order from the nearest one

By The Fulfillment.com team

Why litter and kibble cost the most to ship

Bagged kibble and packaged cat litter account for most of the shipping spend in a typical pet catalog. Both are heavy, and both are big. Nothing else you stock costs as much to send to a far zone or to ship in a box that's too large.

A 20-to-40-lb bag packed loosely in an oversized carton can be billed as if it weighed even more than it does, because a parcel can be billed on its size instead of its weight. Our guide to shipping heavy and bulky pet items explains that billing in full, and our overview of pet products fulfillment covers the rest of the work.

Where the freight cost can come down

• Fit the box to the bag. When a bag of kibble or a jug of litter goes out in a carton too big for it, you pay for the empty space on every order. A box sized to the product stops that. Litter is abrasive and both products are dense, so the packing is also reinforced to resist bursting, because a bag that splits in transit turns into a damage claim.
• Freight arranged by the people who packed it. The same team that picks and packs a heavy order arranges its freight. That freight runs on our carrier relationships rather than one default account. Our freight page explains how it works.
• Move the heaviest loads by pallet. Past a certain weight, an order or a restock is usually cheaper as less-than-truckload (LTL) or full-truckload (FTL) freight than as parcels. We build pallets of litter and kibble for LTL, and combine them into a full truck when the volume is there. The heaviest moves then come off parcel rates altogether, through our freight and LTL/FTL routing service.
• Keep stock near your buyers. Carriers price a parcel on its billed weight and on how many zones it crosses. If you split litter and kibble across our warehouses, each heavy order ships from the one closest to the buyer and crosses fewer zones. Between them, our warehouses reach 99.77% of the US in 1-3 day ground.

Where kibble and litter differ: kibble is animal food

Everything above applies to both products. What separates them is regulation. Clay or crystal litter is heavy and abrasive and expensive to ship, but it has no lot number, no expiry date and no climate need. Freight and strong packing are all it asks for.

Kibble is FDA-regulated animal food. We record its lot number and expiration date when it arrives, tie that lot to each order it ships in, and send the soonest-dated stock out first. Dry kibble is shelf-stable, so it keeps in ambient space. What stays with you as the brand is set out in our guide to the animal-food rules.

One order can hold a bag of litter and a bag of kibble together. Litter shouldn't go through animal-food handling, and kibble shouldn't skip its lot record. Kibble's lot and expiry tracking runs through our lot, expiry, and FEFO control, and litter skips it.

Freight and food handling done by one team

We don't treat the freight and the food handling as separate jobs. Every order is checked by barcode before it ships. Each kibble lot is recorded when the stock arrives and stays tied to the orders it goes out in. The freight on a heavy carton is arranged by the same team that picked and packed it.

The aim is fewer split bags on oversized units and less dimensional-weight charge on the bulky items, the two costs that quietly swell a pet brand's shipping bill. To test this on your own catalog, try the four ways above on your real litter and kibble SKUs, then bring us your volume and channels for a freight estimate.