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Shipping Basics
From Every Parcel to Every Pallet: Something Big is Coming to ShipStation
You know the moment. An order comes in that doesn’t fit your normal flow—a piece of furniture, a pallet of inventory, anything too big or too heavy for parcel shipping. So you close ShipStation, open a separate freight portal, dig up a login you use twice a month, and start the whole process over: new quote, new carrier, new paperwork. Then you go back and finish the rest of your parcel orders like nothing happened.
It works. It’s just never felt like it was built for how you actually ship.
The parcel-freight divide
Most shipping tools are built for one mode. If your business ships mostly parcel, that’s fine—until the day it isn’t. Manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers in particular tend to outgrow “parcel-only” fast: a growing share of what they move is bulky, palletized, or otherwise less-than-truckload (LTL) freight. And right now, that means running two completely separate operations—one tool for boxes, another for pallets—with no shared login, no shared history, and no easy way to compare a parcel rate side by side with a freight rate.
Every order that doesn’t fit the mold costs you a context switch. Multiply that by a busy week and it’s real time and real money, quietly leaking out of a process that should be simple.
We’re not ready to show you everything yet. But we can tell you where this is going.
With the recent merger announcement of Auctane and WWEX Group, we’re quickly working to make this move beneficial for our customers. While we’re not flipping the switch today, a new foundation is already coming together—and it’s bigger than a product update. Two companies built for different halves of your shipping operation are becoming one, and it’s going to change what “shipping platform” means for businesses that move more than just small boxes.
We didn't need to guess that this was worth building. The market's already telling us:
of businesses already ship freight—most of them managing it completely separately from parcel.
want a single, unified parcel + freight platform.
rank LTL as a high business priority.
of ShipStation customers ship again within 30 days.
YoY increase in LTL rates, with new bids up +12.5%—margin pressure that real buying power can help ease.
Why this matters more than a feature checkbox
This isn’t just about convenience, though that’s a big part of it. It’s about what happens when parcel and freight finally live in the same place: No more toggling between tools to quote a shipment, whatever size it is. No more re-entering the same order details in two systems. No more guessing which carrier—parcel or freight—actually makes sense for a given order, because you can compare them in the same view.
We're building this on a foundation that already moves serious volume:
This is just the beginning
We’ve been heads-down on this for a while, and what’s coming is bigger than a single feature drop. It’s a shift in what ShipStation can deliver to shippers—not just parcel, and not freight bolted on as an afterthought, but one platform built to handle everything a growing business actually ships. One platform that will make you better, more efficient, and win with your customers.
We’ll have a lot more to share coming soon, but for now: if you’ve ever wished your parcel and freight shipping just lived in the same place, keep an eye on your inbox. This is just the beginning of something big—and you’re going to want to be there for the rest of it.
Talk to a shipping expert to learn more about ShipStation’s new parcel and freight capabilities!
