Why your 400 g parcel is being billed at 2 kg
Volumetric weight catches out every new shipper exactly once. Here is the formula, why carriers use it, and the three packing changes that stop it costing you money.
You put a light item in a big box, the scale says 400 g, and the charge comes back as though it weighed 2 kg. Nothing has gone wrong. You have met volumetric weight.
The formula
Volumetric weight is length × width × height in centimetres, divided by 5,000. The result is a figure in kilograms. A 40 × 30 × 20 cm box gives 24,000 ÷ 5,000 = 4.8 kg, whatever is inside it.
A shipment is billed on the greater of its actual weight and its volumetric weight. So that box is a 4.8 kg parcel even if it contains a cushion.
Why carriers do this
A vehicle runs out of space long before it runs out of weight capacity. A van full of pillows and a van full of books cost about the same to move, so charging purely by mass would mean bulky shipments were subsidised by dense ones.
The divisor 5,000 is the industry standard for centimetres and kilograms. It is not something individual carriers set.
What to do about it
Three changes remove most of the cost, in order of how much they help:
- Use a box that fits. The single biggest saving is not shipping air. A box one size down often moves a parcel a full step or two down the tariff.
- Compress soft goods. Clothing and textiles vacuum down substantially, and the volume you remove comes straight off the billable weight.
- Do not over-pad. Adequate protection matters, but 5 cm of bubble wrap on every face adds 10 cm to each dimension, and that is cubed in the formula.
Check before you pack, not after
The rate calculator takes dimensions as well as weight and will tell you which of the two is being charged. Running the numbers on two candidate boxes before you tape one shut is a two-minute job that can change what a parcel costs by a third.
Services
- Business Parcel — The lower-cost parcel lane, at contractual rates.
- Speed Post — India Post’s fastest lane, at contractual rates.
Main pages
Daakly is operated by Yahatech Solutions Private Limited, 51/D Goyal Complex, Opp. Ashima Tower, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380054, India. Email team@daakly.com.
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