The 2019 PARCEL Forum Game-Changer of the Year Award Goes to
At the 2019 PARCEL Forum in Dallas, TX, Mountain Rose Herbs was recognized for the steps they took to streamline their parcel operation. By Amanda Armendariz
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ountain Rose Herbs, based in Eugene, OR, was founded in 1987 and today sells herbs, essential oils, and teas directly to the home consumer. On average, over 1,000 shipments a day leave the warehouse, and approximately 300 of these packages fall under HAZMAT classification. These shipments were creating issues for their operations, shares Kris Mitchell, Shipping Manager for Mountain Rose Herbs, and it was the company’s approach to solving these problems that led to the PARCEL Forum
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Advisory Board selecting Mountain Rose Herbs as the 2019 Game-Changer of the Year award winner. “We sell a large assortment of essential oils and herbal extracts with a variety of flash points, most of which fall within the ‘flammable’ or ‘combustible’ HAZMAT categories,” Mitchell explains. “Both categories have very different requirements for packaging and shipping the HAZMAT products. It has been a challenge to comply with FAA and DOT regulations as well as each carrier’s packing and shipping requirements, including weight and packaging restrictions.”
These differing requirements drove Mountain Rose Herbs to seek out a more streamlined solution. “With so many different HAZMAT regulations and requirements with different carriers and government agencies, it was impossible to regulate each package,” Mitchell shares. “The shipping staff did their best to try to ship the packages as required, but it was very confusing and time-consuming.” For example, both flammable and combustible liquids form a vapor above the surface, which can ignite and burn. The main difference between the two designations is that flammable liquids can ignite and burn at a lower temperature (100-139 degrees), whereas combustible liquids ignite at higher temperatures (140-199 degrees). Mountain Rose Herbs must handle the flammable products with more care to ensure the transport is handled safely by limiting the amounts they ship per package and determining on a case-bycase basis whether it can go via ground or air. Shipments of combustible liquids are less restrictive, but USPS still requires special labeling for this class (although UPS does not). USPS and UPS also have different weight limits for ground/air shipments as well as requiring different labeling on the outside of the package. For example, USPS does not permit shipping more than one ounce of flammable liquid in
