Shipping Girth & Oversized Package Calculator

Calculate a package's girth and combined length-plus-girth, then check it against USPS, UPS and FedEx oversize thresholds.

Enter your three package dimensions in any order — the longest is always treated as length.

96 in

Length 24in + girth 72in.

Carrier limits
CarrierMax combinedStatus
USPS (Priority Mail, First-Class, most services)108 inWithin limit
USPS Ground Advantage130 inWithin limit
UPS165 inWithin limit
FedEx Ground / Home Delivery165 inWithin limit
Result: combined length and girth 96 in

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Why carriers measure girth at all

A box's volume, not just its longest side, is what determines how much space it takes up in a delivery van or cargo hold — two packages with an identical 40-inch length can have wildly different shipping costs if one is a flat mailer and the other is a bulky cube. Girth (the distance around the two non-length sides) is the industry's shorthand for capturing that bulk without requiring a full volumetric calculation at the counter. Combined with length, it gives carriers a single number to gate pricing and acceptance policies against.

Why the same box can pass one carrier and fail another

USPS, UPS and FedEx don't share a size-limit policy, and services within a single carrier differ too — USPS Ground Advantage tolerates 22 more inches of combined length-and-girth than standard Priority Mail, and UPS and FedEx each add a separate hard cap on single-side length regardless of girth. A package built around one carrier's limit can easily fail another's, which is exactly the kind of mismatch that causes a shipment to bounce back from a drop-off counter or trigger an unexpected oversize surcharge days after it ships.

What actually happens when a package exceeds the limit

Outcomes vary by carrier and by how much the limit is exceeded: some services simply refuse the package at drop-off, others accept it with a substantial oversize surcharge added after the fact, and self-service label printing sometimes doesn't catch the violation until the package is already in the network. None of that is a guess this tool can make for you — treat an “exceeds limit” flag here as a reason to double-check with your specific carrier and service before you commit to packaging, not as the final word.

How to use this calculator

  1. Enter your package's three dimensions.
  2. Choose inches or centimeters.
  3. Check the carrier table for which limits you clear or exceed.
Which side counts as "length"
The longest of your three dimensions is always treated as length; the other two form the girth — regardless of which input box you typed each number into.
Carrier thresholds
Figures come from each carrier's published domestic parcel tariff as of this tool's review date. Carriers revise these without much notice — always confirm against your specific service level before shipping.

Questions

Why did my package get flagged even though it's under 108 inches long?

108 inches is USPS's most common combined length-and-girth limit, not a single-dimension length cap — a 40in-long box with a large cross-section can easily push length-plus-girth over 108in while the length alone looks fine. UPS and FedEx separately cap single-side length at 108in and 119in respectively, on top of their own 165in combined limit, so a package can fail on either number independently.

Which of my three dimensions counts as "length" for this calculation?

Whichever side is physically longest — carriers don't care which field you typed it into on a shipping label. This tool sorts your three numbers itself and always treats the largest as length, so a box entered as 10×40×10 gets calculated identically to one entered as 40×10×10.

My package fits USPS Ground Advantage's 130in limit but not standard Priority Mail's 108in — what does that mean?

It means the service you ship it under matters as much as the box itself. USPS applies the 108in combined limit to Priority Mail, First-Class Package and most other services, but Ground Advantage specifically allows up to 130in — the same physical package can be shippable under one USPS service and rejected under another.

Do these limits change for international shipments?

Often, yes — international services frequently apply different (sometimes stricter) size and weight limits than the domestic figures this tool checks against. Always confirm your carrier's specific international parcel policy before relying on a domestic calculation for a cross-border shipment.

Sources