Today we're tackling a topic that many online retailers still know little about — and that parcel carriers are not always eager to discuss.
“Big Box” shipping — have you heard of it?
Big Box is a perfectly legitimate, relatively simple and potentially very cost-effective way of reducing shipping costs for orders sent abroad.
So what's the catch?
The main problem, from a carrier's perspective, is that grouping parcels this way can generate less revenue than charging for every international parcel separately. Many of the complications we encounter stem from that commercial reality.
What is a “Big Box”?
A Big Box is simply a large outer parcel that contains many smaller, individually addressed customer parcels. Instead of paying international postage for every small parcel, you consolidate the orders, send the large box to the target country and arrange for local delivery from there. The result can be a substantial reduction in cross-border shipping costs.
Who is Big Box shipping suitable for?
Many online stores that send a steady volume of parcels to a specific foreign country can potentially reduce their costs this way. Whether it makes sense depends on existing rates, shipment volume, the size and weight of your parcels and other conditions. It is particularly useful for businesses sending lots of small, lightweight packages to the same destination country. Let's explain the process and work through an actual calculation.
Big Box
Why use Big Box shipping in the first place?
Big Box became especially popular among Slovenian online retailers when they started competing seriously in other EU markets. They often struggled to match local sellers because postage from Slovenia was so expensive: even small parcels could cost €6–€7, sometimes more than €10, depending on the destination and type of shipment.
How does Big Box solve expensive international shipping?
Domestic parcel delivery and international delivery between EU countries can differ in price by a factor of three or four. For example, a parcel that costs €2–€4 to send within Slovenia might cost €6–€12 to send from Slovenia to another EU country.
A Big Box is a single large parcel — ideally close to the maximum size the carrier accepts — filled with individually packed customer orders. You pay once to transport it to the target country. There, a local delivery provider opens the outer box and injects the smaller parcels into its domestic delivery network.
You can prepare each small parcel in advance with a local shipping label for the destination country. The final deliveries then run at local rates. Your extra cost is the large outer parcel itself — typically a combination of postage and packaging. In the example used here, that cost was often around €10–€15, and the carrier could accept roughly 30 kg of consolidated small parcels if their combined volume permitted.
In short, the process looks like this:
- Pack each foreign customer's order in its own parcel and attach a domestic label for the destination market (for example, after contracting with DPD Poland). This gives you access to local shipping rates.
- Put all the small parcels going to Poland that day into one Big Box, which you dispatch as a single international shipment.
- Send that Big Box from your Slovenian address or warehouse to a DPD Poland depot. The receiving operator opens it and delivers the smaller parcels to their final customers.
Would Big Box make financial sense for my business?
The calculation is straightforward, but every company has to run its own numbers. It depends on its current carrier offer, parcel dimensions and weights, the number of orders per day, its location and other factors.
Start by collecting these figures:
- Your average number of customer parcels sent to the chosen country.
- The average price you currently pay for one international parcel.
- How many small parcels can fit into a fully packed Big Box, taking both dimensions and weight into account. Ask your carrier about the maximum permitted dimensions and weight for an international parcel.
- The complete cost of one Big Box: buying the large carton and paying to send it.
- The domestic parcel rate offered by carriers in the destination country.
With those figures, you can calculate the break-even point — the daily number of parcels at which consolidated Big Box shipping becomes cheaper than sending each order separately across the border.
Example calculation
- We send around 20 customer parcels a day to Poland.
- Our Slovenian carrier currently charges €6 per parcel, which means roughly €120 per day.
- We can fit around 50 small parcels in one Big Box, so capacity is not a problem.
- Sending the Big Box to Poland costs €15, and the large carton costs €3.
- A local Polish delivery provider has offered a rate of €3 per parcel.
With our current international rate, we spend 20 × €6 = €120 per day for the 20 orders.
With a Big Box, we spend 20 × €3 for the final deliveries, plus €15 for the international Big Box shipment and €3 for the carton. Total: €78.
So even at 20 parcels per day, this method can pay off. The saving is €42 per day, or €1,260 over a 30-day month, provided that saving is worth the additional handling work.
Of course, volumes may rise or fall. If you later send 30, 40 or even 50 parcels a day to that market, the potential savings become greater still.
This sounds too complicated. I wouldn't know where to start.
That's understandable. None of us can be an expert in everything. It often makes sense to leave this kind of “creative logistics” to a specialist fulfilment provider such as Warehouse.si. You can contact its team without obligation to explore whether they can arrange better international parcel rates for your business.
It is not unusual for a retailer to discover that simply switching carriers can deliver enormous savings — a subject we've covered in this separate article. We have worked with retailers whose partner shipping rates saved more money than the entire cost of using a fulfilment centre for storage and dispatch. In other words, the shipping discount alone paid for their outsourced operations.
But back to Big Box shipping.
What are the disadvantages of Big Box shipping?
Delayed tracking information
- Your final customer parcels carry local destination-country labels, so their first meaningful scan is usually recorded only after the Big Box has reached the local depot and been opened. When you hand over the Big Box in Slovenia, you initially have just the one tracking number for the outer parcel. Customers see scans on their individual packages only after they have been processed in the destination country. They may worry that you have not dispatched anything for the first two or three days while the box is in transit. You need to communicate clearly: explain that their order left Slovenia, that local tracking will activate once the parcel has been scanned in their country, and that delivery is expected shortly afterwards, often within another day if service conditions allow.
Claims, loss and damage
- There is slightly more concentrated risk with Big Box shipping. If one large box is lost or damaged, every customer parcel inside it may be affected. Before signing with a foreign carrier, specify exactly where one carrier's liability ends and the other's begins. Avoid situations in which each carrier blames the other. As a general starting point, your Slovenian carrier should be responsible for delivering the outer box to the agreed foreign depot. If it is lost in transit or delivered to an unknown person or the wrong location, its responsibility needs to be clear. Once the foreign operator formally accepts the box, responsibility for onward handling should be agreed with that provider. Put all of this in writing. Also agree in advance how you will prove the number and identity of the smaller parcels if the Big Box disappears. We recommend a signed handover document listing parcel counts, tracking numbers and recipient names. The driver can decide whether to count the individual parcels, but the record needs to exist.
Are there any other advantages to using Big Boxes?
Yes. In many cases, you can negotiate an arrangement under which the foreign delivery company holds undelivered customer orders — and potentially returns and complaints — at its depot, then sends everything back together in a Big Box once or twice a month, depending on volume. Customers receive a convenient domestic return address, while you pay a relatively small amount for consolidating returns, such as one international box every 14 days. You also avoid paying for every uncollected parcel to be returned separately.
My carrier says it won't let me send Big Boxes. What should I do?
A Big Box is, at its simplest, a large international parcel — a service that parcel carriers normally describe in their standard tariffs.
If a partner deliberately obstructs a commercially reasonable arrangement, you are entitled to challenge that decision and explore an alternative carrier that supports your logistics optimisation.
The Warehouse.si fulfilment centre also offers Big Box-based delivery for customers and destination countries where it is operationally sensible, particularly where conventional cross-border parcel rates are excessive.
For more information about working together or arranging Big Box deliveries, contact the team through the Warehouse.si contact form and ask about more competitive international shipping rates and terms.
Damir Vidan
OnlySales.si