UPS Hazmat Shipping Made Easy for Shopify Merchants

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PluginHive

4 min readDec 7, 2021

HAZMAT, or hazardous materials, are objects or substances that can endanger one’s health, safety, property, or the environment; are listed or classed in rules; and are moved in commerce. Aerosols, lighters, explosives, gasses, flammable liquids, and other items fall under this category. Due to the risk factor associated with these products, shipping hazardous products require special handling following some set of guidelines, and only a few shipping companies support these shipments like UPS. We will discuss how to ship hazardous materials & how to handle Shopify UPS Hazmat shipping.

How to ship UPS hazmat or hazardous materials?

UPS, one of the world’s largest shipping companies that has been shipping goods all over the world since 1907, conforms with all laws and regulations issued by the Department of Transportation (D.O.T.), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and other regulatory bodies to ensure safe transportation of Dangerous Goods or Hazardous Materials via all modes of transportation, including road, air, and rail.

To ship hazardous materials/dangerous goods with UPS, you must enter into an agreement that ensures compliance with applicable regulations as well as UPS carrier requirements. Along with this, you have to meet some basic requirements, such as having a registered UPS Shipping account and a signed agreement of dangerous goods and hazmat materials to ship such products effortlessly. You can follow these conditions for a smooth UPS Hazmat shipping:

You can follow these conditions for a smooth UPS Hazmat shipping:

Having a registered UPS Shipping account.
Having a payment account.
Adding Dangerous Goods Shipping to ‘My Payment Account’.
Signing the contract for Dangerous Goods and Hazmat Materials.

Advantages of shipping hazmat goods using UPS Hazmat

Shipping is not confined to a single type of product and some commodities. Some products have particular shipment handling and safety laws, such as hazardous materials. Therefore without the facility for Hazmat goods shipment, shipping hazardous goods on your own would lead to dangerous outcomes as well as be expensive. On the other hand, to solve this problem, using a shipping carrier like UPS is a better option as it can assist you to ship risk-free at a lower cost with the proper handling of dangerous goods.

Along with this, hazardous materials require special packaging, markings, and paperwork while in transit by air, ground, rail, and sea. The shipper is responsible for knowing, understanding, and applying these requirements to any shipment involving hazardous items. However, for a merchant handling a large number of orders on a daily basis, it becomes an almost impossible task. Thus, sending via UPS lessens the load and streamlines the procedure, helping you to access all the important hazmat documents in just a few clicks.

Shipping UPS Hazmat easily using Shopify Multi Carrier Shipping Label App

Shopify has limitations on Hazardous Material Shipments. However, you may do this easily using the Shopify Multi Carrier Shipping Label App. The App integrates with UPS & lets you print Hazmat shipping labels from your Shopify store dashboard provided your UPS Account number has this service enabled.

Not only that, but other documents, such as 8-panel sheets for shipping within the US & 6-panel sheets for shipping from the US to Canada, are simply accessible from the app’s Advanced Section. And these no. of panel sheets get automatically set based on the “ship from” and “ship to” addresses entered.

To understand the process follow these steps:

First, you need to go to product settings and under UPS configure all the details as shown below: