I realize that it's economies of scale, but I had no idea that there was such a disparity in that scale.
I can't compete with that.
Oh yeah. Every place I worked that did a lot of shipments had huge breaks. But it's not always perfect. We have a killer rate here on freight charges. But small 'normal' packages are nearly retail pricing. We can ship a couple tons of stuff to Sweden cheaper than I can mail half a dozen couple pound packages to California next day. Reverse situation back when I worked at a textbook company as a contractor. Small packages, we got a ridiculous discount, maybe a buck or two per book sized pouch. Freight was nose bleeding expensive.
They only give discounts if you're making the numbers attractive. Otherwise, they don't. Corporate accounts still get a better discount than retail, though.
It's a tough thing to beat. I use Amazon for virtually everything because of the free 2 day shipping. $4-6 next day delivery is an insane advantage as well. Smaller businesses have to change $20-60 for next delivery. Even on a couple hundred dollar item, that's a huge advantage. Yeah, Amazon has pretty good customer service, but it's the cheap
fast delivery that is the biggest advantage to me.