Your store, warehouse, carriers, and back-office systems all need to talk to each other. We build the connections that keep orders moving, and we have done it for years for a high-volume online retailer.
Overview
When your checkout cannot quote accurate shipping, staff re-type addresses into carrier websites, or freight pickups are scheduled by phone, small inefficiencies add up across thousands of orders. Good integrations remove those steps entirely.
Since 2014 we have designed, built, and modernized the backend shipping, inventory, and warehouse management systems behind a national e-commerce supplier's high-volume platform, covering parcel and LTL freight carriers from rate quotes through labels and pickups. We are co-authors and the most active contributors to friendly_shipping, the open source Ruby library that grew out of that work.
Carrier APIs change, get deprecated, and occasionally go down. We build integrations that handle those realities gracefully and keep them current when carriers retire old versions.
Sound familiar?
Flat rates or outdated tables mean you either overcharge customers or quietly absorb the difference.
People re-enter addresses and order details into carrier sites, warehouse tools, or accounting software.
Carriers like UPS and USPS have moved to new APIs, and older integrations stop working on their deadline.
LTL quotes, bills of lading, and pickups are managed manually instead of from your own system.
What's included
How it works
We document how orders, inventory, and shipments move through your business today.
We choose the right APIs and design the integration to handle errors, retries, and edge cases.
We implement and test against carrier sandboxes, then release carefully alongside your existing process.
We keep integrations current as carriers update their APIs and your business adds new services.
Experience
Backend shipping, inventory, and warehouse management systems for a high-volume e-commerce platform, including live rate quotes, address validation, label printing, and LTL freight pickups across UPS, USPS, and several freight carriers.
An integration layer for shipping services used in production e-commerce. It covers UPS, USPS, ShipEngine, TForce Freight, R+L Carriers, and more, and we are among its primary authors.
friendly_shipping on GitHubQuestions
Have a question that is not answered here? Get in touch and we will give you a straight answer.
We have built integrations for UPS, USPS, ShipEngine, TForce Freight, R+L Carriers, and others. If a carrier offers an API, we can usually integrate with it.
Most of our e-commerce work is on Ruby-based platforms like Solidus and on custom Rails applications. We can also build services that connect hosted platforms to carriers and back-office systems through their APIs.
Yes. Carriers periodically retire older APIs, and migrating integrations to the current versions is work we do regularly.
Yes. We have built LTL freight integrations covering rate quotes, bills of lading, pickup scheduling, and pickup cancellation.
Related services
Tailored Ruby on Rails applications that fit the way your business actually works, from customer portals to internal tools.
Custom web applicationsKeep your application secure, fast, and current. We upgrade aging Rails apps and look after them for the long haul.
Rails upgrades and maintenanceCode reviews, architecture guidance, and a second opinion before you commit to a big technical decision.
Technical advisingTell us about your platform, your carriers, and where orders get stuck. We will suggest the most practical place to start.