Zone Skipping

Zone skipping is a shipping strategy where a shipper transports consolidated freight inland — via truckload or air — closer to its destination before injecting parcels into a carrier's local network, thereby 'skipping' higher-priced zones. For example, a California-based shipper might truck a trailer of parcels to a Dallas hub and inject them into a regional carrier's network to achieve Zone 2 or Zone 3 rates on what would otherwise be Zone 6–8 shipments. Zone skipping can meaningfully reduce per-parcel cost for shippers with sufficient volume.