LTL freight for king / cal-king vs mattress-in-a-box for queen-and-under, how do you run both?

The shipping math splits at the queen / king boundary. Queens-and-under compress into a box (Casper’s original innovation in 2014) and ship FedEx Ground or UPS Ground at $25, $50 per order, the customer unboxes themselves, the foam re-expands over 24-48 hours, no appointment needed. Kings + cal-kings don’t compress cleanly without permanent foam damage and ship LTL freight at $180, $320 per order with white-glove + appointment scheduling.

Magento needs two parallel shipping rules running on the same checkout:

• Small-package rates for queen-and-under via the UPS / FedEx native API. Live rate quotes, dimensional weight applied, delivery 3-7 business days.
• LTL freight rates for king + cal-king via Worldship, SMC3, or a direct carrier-API integration with R+L / Old Dominion / ABF / XPO. Quoted on add-to-cart, customer ZIP + mattress weight class drives the rate. Appointment-window scheduler runs post-purchase.

The customer never sees the complexity, they pick a mattress, the cart shows them one shipping price + delivery window, the back-end picks the right carrier flow. Magento’s native multi-shipping-method support handles this with a custom shipping module on top of the LTL side. Total scope ~$3,000, $5,000 to build at $25/hr; once it’s in, every new mattress SKU just inherits the right flow.