New way of calculating shipping weights/rates

[djmonkey1]

In my experience, the way oscommerce calculates the shipping weights of multiple packages is weird. For instance, let's say that a store is set up with a max shipping weight of 8 lbs per package, every item in the store is 3 lbs., and the package tare weight is 2 lbs. This is what happens for orders of three or more items (incidentally I currently only use the FedEx module):

 

1.) It averages the weight of the entire order out over all the packages (ie an order for 3 items comes out as 2 x 5.5. lbs, which is physically impossible)

 

2.) It only counts the package tare weight once instead of once per package (in the example above it should at least be 2 x 6.5 lbs but the tare weight is only counted one time)

 

3.) Additionally it doesn't seem to be possible to enter max shipping weights for different products (such as 8 lbs for certain goods in the above example, but 50 lbs for other goods, and also not allow for 8 lbs max items to ship with 50 lbs. max items)

 

I know that Piotr Kami?ski has developed the zonesx module to address some or all of these problems, but it seems that his fix should be unnecessary.

 

Here is my suggestion/proposal:

 

a.) Change the way the shopping cart calculates shipping weights to take into account at least the 3 issues I have raised here (there are probably others).

 

b.) Change the shipping modules (UPS, FedEx, etc) to allow for multiple rate quotes on one order.

 

It seems that this would require some sort of calculator function that may be more complex than what is already used, but I'm not sure. I'm willing to help on this, but I don't know where to start.

 

If anyone has any thoughts on this please let them be read!

 

Thanks for everything,

Stew

 

 

p.s. I don't understand zone shipping rate tables, so this may be my problem!