Shipment Ship Option Overview

Overview

You may optionally specify a shipOption parameter when constructing a shipment, either using the standard Shipment construction or using the more popular Carrier and Method Selection with Label Single Call mechanism.

Doing this gives you the ability to specify the kind of shipment performance that you want. Shipium's platform will select the appropriate carrier and method based on this shipment performance criterion.

Specify ship option

To specify shipOption, include a value for it in the shipOption field that is part of the top-level Shipment object. You can do this either during shipment creation or in shipmentParameters when using the all-in-one shipment and label method.

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Warning

This does not guarantee that some specific method is selected, but rather that an appropriate method is selected to meet the requirements specified.

The following example works for either use case, specifying that the shipment should use a two-day ship option:

JSON

{ ...
    ...
    "shipOption": "TwoDay",
    ...
    ...
    ...
}

Ship option values

The following table shows shipOption values that can be specified in the API call.

shipOption Value	Brief Description
Standard	The carrier and method that is fastest possible at the lowest price without any additional upgrades.
ThreeDay	Carriers and methods that provide a reliable 3-day transit time for the given origin and destination.
TwoDay	Carriers and methods that provide a reliable 2-day transit time for the given origin and destination.
NextDay	Carriers and methods that provide a reliable next day by end of day transit time for the given origin and destination.
Overnight	Carriers and methods that provide a reliable next day by morning for the given origin and destination.
PriorityOvernight	Carriers and methods that provide a reliable next day by earliest morning delivery time for the given origin and destination.

FAQ

Q: What happens if an option is not available?

A: If a particular shipOption value is not possible, a 4XX error from either label creation or the all-in-one shipment and label method will give details about the problem.

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Q: Can I include a desired delivery date (DDD) in addition to passing a ship option when using the all-in-one shipment and label method?

A: Yes. For example, shipOption: standard, desiredDeliveryDate: 2023-11-15 limits the carrier selection search to only those methods that are marked as standard and for which the DDD of 2023-11-15 can be met. If the DDD of 2023-11-15 cannot be met, Shipium will return the cheapest service method on 2023-11-16, and so on.