Shipping methods for the Order API

Use shipping_method to choose a service level for an order. A shipping method is not a carrier commitment: the carriers below describe normal routing, and Gearment may use another carrier for the same service level.

Delivery windows are Gearment's stated estimates, not guarantees. Actual delivery times may vary.

Values to send

The two Order API operations accept different forms of the same method:

• POST /api/v3/orders/draft (Create Order Draft) accepts only a METHOD_* enum name or its number. A lowercase code is rejected during request decoding.
• POST /api/v3/orders/price (Get Price Quote) accepts either the lowercase code or the METHOD_* enum name.

For example, Create Order Draft accepts METHOD_STANDARD or 2, while Get Price Quote accepts standard or METHOD_STANDARD. Note that the enum name is METHOD_FAST_SHIP, with an underscore, while the lowercase code is fastship, without an underscore.

POST /api/v3/orders/draft/labeled (Create Order Draft With Label) uses the pre-purchased label details and does not have a shipping_method field.

Method reference

Package	Code	Enum	Gearment delivery estimate	Normal carrier routing	Status
Economy	economy	METHOD_ECONOMY (6)	5-8 business days	GOFO	Live
Standard (contiguous US)	standard	METHOD_STANDARD (2)	3-5 business days	DHL	Live
Standard (AK, HI, PR, VI, GU, APO, FPO, or DPO)	standard - same code	METHOD_STANDARD (2)	5-8 business days	USPS	Live - applied by destination
Fast Ship	fastship	METHOD_FAST_SHIP (4)	1-3 business days	USPS Priority / FedEx 2Day	Live
Stamp	stamp	METHOD_STAMP (5)	1-5 business days (domestic)	-	Accepted by the API
Ground	ground	METHOD_GROUND (3)	-	-	Retired 2026-07-10 - see below
International Standard	Derived (in_standard)	METHOD_STANDARD	14-21 business days	DHL	Applied by destination
International Stamp	Derived (in_stamp)	METHOD_STAMP	14-21 business days	DHL	Applied by destination

Ground, after retirement

ground was retired on 2026-07-10 and is no longer one of the shipping services the platform offers. What happens to an order that still sends it depends on how the order arrives, which is worth knowing if you have older integrations or saved files:

• API: the call is refused with FAILED_PRECONDITION and the message shipping method not supported: ground. Nothing is created.
• CSV import: the row is accepted and the method is rewritten to standard. The import does not report this as an error, so an old file containing ground imports cleanly and the orders ship - and are priced - as Standard.

If you still send ground anywhere, change it to standard explicitly rather than relying on either behaviour.

Destination rules

"Special Standard" is a business label, not a separate method. There is no special_standard code. Send Standard, and Gearment applies the offshore or military estimate from the destination address.

PO Box addresses, AK, HI, PR, VI, GU, and APO, FPO, or DPO addresses accept only Standard and Fast Ship. Other methods are rejected when the order enters the API.

For an international destination, do not send in_standard or in_stamp. Those are internal derived codes and the API rejects them as input. Send Standard or Stamp in the form accepted by the endpoint; Gearment derives the international variant from the destination. Fast Ship, Ground, and Economy do not have international variants.

Economy availability

Economy is available for a subset of products. There is no supported API call to check Economy availability for an individual product. If an order uses Economy for an unsupported product, it does not fail at submission; the order fails later at label purchase. A price quote must not be used as an Economy availability signal.

When Economy cannot be used

Economy is carried by a single carrier. When that carrier cannot take an order, the order is not rejected: it is moved to standard before it is charged, and priced as a Standard order. Your customer still receives the parcel; what changes is the shipping method and the amount you are billed.

An earlier version of this page described a rejection at creation with HTTP 412 and reason economy_zip_not_covered. That behaviour no longer exists. Nothing needs to change in your integration to keep orders flowing, but an order you submitted as Economy may be charged at the Standard rate.

There are four reasons an order cannot use Economy:

Reason code	Meaning
uncovered_zip	The ship-to ZIP is outside the carrier's current US pickup coverage, matched on the first 5 digits
marketplace_platform	The order comes from a marketplace the carrier cannot report tracking to
over_weight	The parcel is above the carrier's weight limit
non_conus	The destination is outside the contiguous United States

In practice you will see uncovered_zip and marketplace_platform. The other two are part of the contract rather than everyday outcomes: offshore and military destinations are already refused Economy at submission under Destination rules, and the weight limit sits above what print-on-demand parcels normally reach.

Seeing that it happened

Order and draft responses carry shipping_substitution when a substitution was applied:

Field
from	The method you requested
to	The method the order now uses
reason	One of the codes above

The object is absent when no substitution was applied. The order activity log records the same change in plain language.

Knowing in advance

POST /api/v3/shipping/economy/coverage/check answers the destination half of the question. Send up to 100 ZIP codes; for each one you get covered, the reason when it is not, and the coverage_version the answer came from. See Check Economy Coverage in the API console.

Two things to hold on to:

It answers uncovered_zip only. Weight and the originating marketplace are properties of the order rather than of the address, so no destination check can speak for them. A covered ZIP means "not excluded by carrier coverage", not "guaranteed Economy".

Coverage is versioned and it moves. Compare coverage_version to decide whether a cached copy is still current; two consecutive editions have differed by nearly 300 ZIP codes, and a cached list that has drifted will disagree with what you are charged.

A price quote does not warn about this - it prices the method you asked for. Do not read a successful Economy quote as confirmation that the order will ship Economy.

Coverage expands and contracts over time, and the check always runs against the current coverage set, so a ZIP that was substituted once may be served directly later with no integration change on your side.