I’ve been reselling books on Amazon for a while and ship about 300 books a week to Amazon FBA through UPS, Amazon’s partnered carrier.

Post: If Amazon FBA Bookselling is new to you, check out my introductory guide for beginners.

Shipping individual boxes of books to Amazon is inexpensive because UPS offers deeply discounted rates to Amazon FBA sellers. But if you have a large number of shipments, say more than 15 boxes, it will add up.

Is there a way to save even more on shipping? Yes, you can save up to 60% by shipping pallets, or Less than a Truckload (LTL), instead.

I recently shipped a pallet of books to Amazon. I saved about £130 in shipping cost and it was easier than I expected. In this post, I go through LTL shipping and the steps I followed to successfully send in my first pallet.

About LTL shipping

Less than a Truckload, LTL, is a term used to describe the transportation of pallets from one destination to another. If you have more than 15 boxes of used books to ship to Amazon, you should consider LTL. Why? Well, mainly because you will save a load of money.

If you’ve never sent in a pallet before, you’re probably anxious, right? Well, you shouldn’t be. The process of sending in a pallet to Amazon is straightforward.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

• List your books on Amazon through Scanlister
• Sticker all the books
• Box the books and provide box content information
• Print box labels and label every box
• Palletise the individual boxes

When it comes to LTL shipping, Amazon has some guidelines you’ll need to abide by, so make sure to read them here.

You’ll also need to find a delivery company to transport your pallet since Amazon does not have a partnered courier, at least in the UK anyway.

Creating a shipping plan

This section assumes that you know how to upload inventory to Amazon. If you don’t, check out this article to learn how to prepare and send an FBA shipment from start to end.

Once you’ve uploaded some books to your Amazon inventory, you have to create a shipping plan to let Amazon know the products (as well how many units of each) you want them to fulfill.

To create a shipment, in Seller Central, select ‘Manage Inventory’ in the ‘Inventory’ drop-down menu.

From there select all the items you want Amazon to fulfill.

Then, click the ‘Action on XX Selected’ button, and select ‘Send/Replenish Inventory’ in the drop-down menu:

Then ‘Yes, continue’.

Once you’ve done this, create a new shipping plan by choosing ‘Create a new shipping plan’ and state how your package is packed.

In this case, select ‘Individual products’ since you’re likely to be sending a variety of book titles. The hit ‘Continue to shipping plan’.

That’s it. Your shipping plan is created.

But, as you can see, I only added 28 books in that plan, which isn’t enough for a pallet. Obviously.

So, once you’ve created a new shipping plan, keep adding inventory until you have enough items for a pallet.

Adding inventory to an existing shipment is straightforward. On the Manage Inventory page, find and select the items you want to add your shipping plan, then select ‘Send/Replenish Inventory’ button.

But this time select ‘Add to an existing shipping plan’ instead, and then just follow the instructions:

Repeat this process until you have at least 650 books, enough for a pallet.

After following instructions, choose ‘Less than Truckload (LTL)’ as delivery method and ‘More than one SKU per box’ as shipment packaging.

Finally, print your box labels and the pallet(s) labels.

Palletising individual boxes

Prior to this shipment, I had never sent a pallet delivery in my life. I was excited but also nervous. This led me to research everything about pallet shipping to Amazon FBA.

Here are some of Amazon’s key requirements that I discovered:

• Label all boxes. Make sure to label each individual boxes and add Heavy Package, over 15kg on of your boxes exceed 15 kg in weight.
• Use a four-way entry durable pallet. Some pallets have entries only on their back and front, not on their side. Make sure to find a pallet with entries on their sides, too. Make sure it’s durable too since books are generally heavy.
• Use a standard sized pallet. Assuming you’re not shipping outside of the UK, you need to use standard 1 x 1.2 m pallets that have grade B or higher GMA rating. Also, make sure you don’t use a broken or damaged pallet. Oh…and remember to place heavier boxes first.
• Use clear shrink wrap. Lastly, stretch wrap your pallet using clear shrink-wrap. Oh…make sure to add a Do not break stretch-wrap label on each side of your pallet. I forgot to do this bit 🙁

 

Finding a pallet delivery company

Shipping pallets to Amazon trickier than shipping individual boxes because Amazon doesn’t have a partnered carrier. So I headed over to Google and did some research on pallet delivery companies.

After some research, I found National Pallets. They’re a UK pallet delivery and freight distribution company. I found other companies but most didn’t have experience delivering to Amazon FBA.

Then I headed over to National Pallets’ website and got a quote, which was straightforward. I was required to provide some essential information such as shipping ID so that they could book an appointment with the fulfillment warehouse, which is mandatory.

Edit: I have found another company that has experience shipping to Amazon FBA and are a lot cheaper than National Pallets. The company is called Palletline and operates nationally. 

How much did I save?

In total, I shipped 678 books in 18 boxes (weighing 450kg in total, or 25 kg each) to Amazon. This cost £68 + VAT. That’s £0.10 per book. Very cheap!

Normally I’m able to send a box (45.7×30.5×30.5 cm) of books weighing 25 kg for about £11, which still very cheap. But 18 boxes would have cost £198, or £0.29 per book.

All in all, I saved an incredible £130 in shipping cost.

Conclusion

If you can save up enough books to make a pallet, I would highly recommend LTL shipping. It will save you a lot of money which in my opinion is as good as making money.

The only disadvantage with LTL shipping is that it can sometimes take a lot longer for your inventory to become active. But if have enough books in your inventory this should affect things too much. Luckily for me, I didn’t have this issue; it only took about a week.

From now on, I will be doing only LTL shipments. And so should you, if you can.