Interactive model
Parcel zone optimizer
Place one, two, or three fulfillment nodes, then see what the zone distribution and the blended cost per package do in response.
Presets
Configuration A
- Kansas City, KS660
Configuration B
- Edison, NJ088
- City of Industry, CA917
Configuration C
- Edison, NJ088
- Dallas, TX750
- City of Industry, CA917
| Configuration | Avg zone | Cost per package | Delta | Spend at 20,000 orders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas City, KS | 5.29 | $10.70 | baseline | $213,932 |
| Edison, NJ + City of Industry, CA | 4.34 | $10.01 | −6.4% (−$0.69) | $200,138 |
| Edison, NJ + Dallas, TX + City of Industry, CA | 3.88 | $9.65 | −9.8% (−$1.04) | $193,053 |
Against the baseline, the best configuration shown moves the average zone from 5.29 to 3.88 and cuts the cost of the average package by 9.8%, which holds at any volume. On this synthetic table that is $1.04 a package, or $20,879 across 20,000 orders.
Zone distribution
Zone 2 is a local delivery and zone 8 is coast to coast. Moving weight left on this chart is the whole game, because the rate table rises with distance faster than it rises with anything else you control.
| Zone 2 | 1.7% 16.7% 18.4% |
|---|---|
| Zone 3 | 5.0% 13.6% 17.2% |
| Zone 4 | 18.4% 20.1% 29.0% |
| Zone 5 | 28.4% 22.2% 28.5% |
| Zone 6 | 30.2% 22.9% 6.8% |
| Zone 7 | 16.3% 4.5% 0.0% |
| Zone 8 | 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% |
Where the volume lands
Configuration A
- Kansas City, KS100% · zone 5.29
Configuration B
- Edison, NJ82% · zone 4.31
- City of Industry, CA18% · zone 4.49
Configuration C
- Edison, NJ65% · zone 3.79
- Dallas, TX24% · zone 4.15
- City of Industry, CA12% · zone 3.82
What the model assumes
- 20,000 synthetic orders, destinations drawn from public ZIP3 geography, weights lognormal with a median near three pounds, 87 percent residential.
- Every order ships from the node that reaches it in the lowest zone. Cost breaks a tie. Inventory placement, capacity, labor cost, and inbound freight are all held constant, which is the assumption most worth arguing with.
- Rates are a synthetic ground table set at roughly half of list, the range a mid-volume shipper tends to pay after discounts, with a synthetic fuel percentage and a flat residential add. Read the percentages as the result and the dollars as illustration. Dim weight is not modeled, so a bulky, light product would see a different answer.
How it works
Parcel is priced on distance, and distance is priced in zones. A zone is a band of miles between where a package ships from and where it is going, running from zone 2 for a local delivery out to zone 8 for coast to coast. The rate table rises with weight, and it rises faster with zone, which is why where you put a building changes your shipping bill more than almost anything else you negotiate.
The question this tool answers is the one a network planner actually faces. Given where your orders are going, how much does a second node buy you, and where should it be. The answer is rarely the city that feels obvious, because the goal is not to sit near your customers on a map. The goal is to move the most volume into the nearest zone bands, and those are two different objectives whenever demand is lumpy.
Read the histogram before the dollar figures. A configuration that shifts weight from zones 6 and 7 into zones 3 and 4 is doing structural work, and the cost line is only the receipt for it.
Data provenance
- Orders
- Synthetic. Generated by seeded formula, not sampled from any real order file. Drawn from a demand proxy built on public US Census ZCTA counts and land area per ZIP3. Denser prefixes receive a sublinear boost because ecommerce demand skews urban. Lognormal shaped, median near three pounds, clipped to the one to seventy pound rate table.
- Zones
- Great circle distance between ZIP3 centroids, multiplied by a road circuity factor of 1.17, then assigned to a zone using published ground zone distance bands. Real carrier zone charts are built on rate areas and driving distance, not straight line distance, so individual lanes will differ by a zone in places. The distribution is representative; a single lane is not authoritative. Centroids come from US Census Bureau, 2020 Gazetteer Files, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas.
- Rates
- Synthetic. Every figure was generated by formula. rate = 4.00 + 0.31 * (zone - 2)^1.25 + weightLb^0.92 * (0.275 + 0.0425 * (zone - 2)) No carrier rate card, no negotiated agreement, no employer pricing. Replace this file to plug in published list rates with their own provenance.
The zone lookup and the rate table are separate modules behind stable interfaces, so either can be replaced with a real table without touching the model. The code is on GitHub.