Today’s entry focuses on the question can I use a food scale for shipping? The quick answer is yes as long as the scale is accurate. And, we only recommend you do this in low volume situations. In other words, if you’re shipping a box to a ebay customer or perhaps shipping a return back to the store.
However, if you’re running a business and you’re shipping out a handful of boxes everyday or quite often, then you really need to invest a little money into a postal scale or even a full blown shipping scale.
Advantages of Buying a True Shipping Scale
Of course we would like you to buy a shipping scale from us! But there are actually some real advantages of having a true shipping scale. One of the biggest advantages is the scale can be connected to your computer and the weight of the box is populated into the shipping software automatically. Now if you’re shipping two boxes a day, this isn’t that big of a deal. However, once you start shipping out multiple boxes out everyday, this can be a real time saver. Of course, you’ll also need to measure the box dimensions as well.
Reliable Weighing Equipment
Another advantage of buying a true postal scale is they are often much more reliable than a kitchen scale. We’ve discussed this before but basically lower end scales like pocket scales, kitchen scales, and some bathroom scales are built with some really cheap load cells and components. So, if you were to compare one of those scales with a true shipping scale like the Mettler Toledo BC60, there really is no comparison.
Accurate Shipping and Postal Equipment
The last advantage that we’ll mention is accuracy. Many of the shipping scales that we offer are actually NTEP certified legal for trade scales. Weighing equipment has to fairly high quality in order to pass the testing to receive a certificate of conformance (CoC#). There are many scales out there on amazon, ebay, and numerous websites… but if a scale has passed the testing to truly be NTEP approved, you can feel confident there is at least a certain level of accuracy and quality in place with that weighing instrument.
I hope this entry has helped you understand the importance of accurate and reliable shipping scales. So next time when you are wondering, can you use a kitchen scale for shipping, you will remember that in the long run it’s probably better to choose a good reliable shipping scale. If you have questions or would like more info or pricing or product recommendations regarding our shipping scales and postal scales, be sure to contact our customer service department.