An explanation of how the hazardous material fee is applied to parcel shipments
The hazardous materials fee is a package-level fee. Therefore, if there are five packages in a shipment and three of them contain a product identified as hazardous material, then the hazardous material fee is charged three times. The number of packages identified as containing hazardous materials will depend on your settings.
When the Standard Box Sizes feature is not in use.
Quote each item marked hazmat as shipping as its own package.
Found on the Quote Settings page, this option is the default setting. If the item is marked as hazardous material in its product-level settings, then each occurrence of it in the Cart will represent one package in the shipment, and the hazardous materials fee will be applied each time.
Combine quantities of the same item marked as hazmat into a single package before applying the hazmat fee.
This setting is also found on the Quote Settings page. When chosen, if an item is marked as a hazardous material and more than one of it is in the Cart, each one will be quoted as if it will ship as an individual package, but the hazmat fee will be applied only once. Although each item will be quoted as if it will ship as an individual package, choose this option if you will consolidate the items into one box or a fewer number of boxes than there are items.
Consider an example where Product A is marked as hazardous material, and there is a quantity of ten of it in the Cart. In this case, the hazardous material fee will be applied once.
Consider another example where Product A and Product B are both marked as hazardous material, and the Cart contains ten of Product A and five of Product B. In this case, the hazardous material fee will be applied twice.
When the Standard Box Sizes feature is in use.
The Standard Box Sizes feature is an optional feature that will calculate a packaging solution using the boxes you indicate are available and the contents of the Cart. When enabled, the packaging algorithm will identify the best packaging solution. When the Cart contains items that are marked as hazardous material, the packaging algorithm will keep track of their placement (which boxes contain hazardous material) and apply the hazardous material fee accordingly.
If you want items marked as hazardous material to be quoted as shipping as their own package, locate the Standard Box Sizes Settings on the product shipping parameter page and enable the setting Ship as its own package.
