Use UPS XML and Table Rates

[lhungil]

Not quite as unusual as one might think. I've thought a little too much about this exact same scenario.

If a customer orders a product requiring freight and a product which can ship via parcel... could the store just send both products together via freight? Not ideal as it would be a little higher in cost... but at least the website would provide a shipping estimate without too much additional work. If the store wanted they could also add a statement to the checkout letting people know the actual shipping cost may be less (and they can call / email / contact for a final shipping quote). And if the store is doing payment authorization - you can typically request a lower capture amount than the authorization amount - so in the end the customer can be charged just for the real shipping cost. Again not ideal, but an easy change.

I suspect to tackle this the way the store wants, one would have to build a custom shipping module which understands different shipping carriers (table and UPS), which products can be shipped by which carrier, builds individual quotes for each carrier, adds the individual quotes together, and would probably not be a bad idea for the module to somehow save the shipping method + cost for each quote (and contained products) so it can later be pulled up from the admin (for shipping / invoicing purposes). Quite a bit of work, but fits the needs.

Maybe someone else has some alternative ideas...