Issues with multiple shipping method

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I work for a manufacturer named White Water Marine. They make high-end stainless steel fittings for yachts. Many of their smaller products can ship UPS. But they also have some very large ones which need to be crated and shipped by truck. For 10 of the more popular oversized items, they want to sell them online instead of by order COD.
I largely solved this issue by creating a second manual shipping method called "Truck." It is set to apply only to weightless products. UPS shipping method is set to exclude any weightless products. This does work but I'm not totally happy.
If the customer just adds "truck" items to the cart, they see this. Using the shipping method description field, I am able to add a critical message to the customer, explaining what's going on.

But now, if the customer also adds a UPS item, we only see the UPS shipping method. The message to customer explaining "truck" shipping disappears. The one highly positive news is that system only charges for the UPS items. Customer can finish and pay. There are no calculation errors.



This situation obviously could be confusing to the customer. There are a lot of special considerations in shipping oversized items. Some of these White Water items take up as much space as a couch.
So I wondered if it is possible to display a custom content field somewhere at the top of cart or inside it at a strategic spot. It would explain to the customer that they can expect a separate freight charge for "truck" items; and that is why they are not being charged for shipping when they finish checking out.
I would like to display the message all the time, not conditionally. Right now it displays only when "truck" items alone are added to the cart. It disappears when UPS items are also added.
I hope I've explained this, it's gets complicated.
Thank you,
-Jim Gribble

Thank you, but I found this doesn't work.
Neither shipping method shows.
Customer can't progress to payment.
But, you gave me a clue and I may have come up with a workaround.
I created a warehouse called "truck shipping."
I assigned the "truck shipping" shipping method to the "truck shipping" warehouse.
Then at the top level of the truck-shipped products, I assigned them to the "truck shipping" warehouse.
Now the "truck shipping" shipping method with its helpful note to user stays on screen in the cart even after conflicting UPS-shipped items are added.
It disappears from the cart if I delete the "truck-shipped" item.
Only the UPS shipping method remains.
Customer can finish and pay as usual.
Does this sound right, have I got it?
-Jim G.

I think I have solved the problem with your help but one puzzling issue remains. A stern rail is a weightless "truck item." No shipping should be charged and its presence in the cart should not matter. Yet it does, in a way which baffles me.
Here we see a view of both a stanchion (a standard UPS) item and a stern rail.
We see that UPS ground costs $36.60.

Now I remove the oversized weightless item. The cart recalculates and we see what I believe to be the real shipping price for the stanchion. That price is $13.40. As you will see below.





So somehow the presence of the weightless item increases the shipping charge to customer by $23.20.
So the question I have is, why? Why, when the customer adds a weightless, shipping-free item to the cart, it increases shipping charge for standard UPS items. The increase is not always the same but seems to be in the range of $20 to $25. In scouring the settings, I could not discover any which would cause this. But obviously I am doing something wrong somewhere.
What would you advise?
Thank you.
-Jim G.

That would be great. I am creating a super admin account for you.

Yes, fantastic, that's exactly what we want! Thank you.
Now, please see my note about the other issue.
For some reason, when a weightless oversized item is added to the cart, it adds $20 to $30 to the shipping price for standard UPS items. I have it set up so that zero-weight items will not be charged shipping. But, they apparently are, for reasons which baffle me.
In your cart, if you remove the "truck" item and refresh, you will see this for yourself.
The shipping charge for the stanchion will change and will be showing about $13 - much less.
Very strange.
But I believe we are close.
-Jim G.

You seem to have fixed this?! The shipping prices all work.
I can't wait to learn where I messed up.

Seems like I helped you fix a bug? It's always my pleasure.
My employer is going to be thrilled with this solution.
You just can't do these sophisticated things with cut-rate hosted e--commerce builders.
-Jim G

Entry deleted - issue resolved.

I see that in our test products, you seem to have selected the appropriate warehouse.
I believe that now needs to be done across-the-board, product by product?
Is that the key to making this work?
I believe so, based on my tests.
Assuming I do need to select warehouse per product, what about products with variants? Is it sufficient to designate warehouse for parent product? Must that also be done individually for child variant products? If I leave blank, do variant children inherit parent warehouse settings?
Similarly, if I have parent product which displays options via child products with variants, must warehouse be designated ONLY for parent product?
Am I on the right track?
Thanks again,
-Jim G.

I had kind of arrived at these conclusions. Thanks for the full explanation. Seems to be working. I invite you to try it yourself here. jimg74.sg-host.com/custom-marine-stainle...anchions-stern-rails
Pretty neat.
Add a pulpit and a stanchion from any of the demo products. Proceed to pay but DON'T pay because that gateway is live!
One thing I found when I purposely made an error inputting my customer info.
I used my real address from the state of Wisconsin but assigned state of Michigan as my state. The system gagged on that. But instead of producing an error message such as "invalid state selection," the system simply broke. When I tried to pay the checkout screen recycled and for each product showed an error message "no shipping method found."
Thought you might be interested.
-Jim G.

I came up with, "It appears you entered an invalid shipping address. You must correct it before finishing and paying."
This will help a lot.
I appreciate learning that UPS is triggering that error message. Now what was seeing makes total sense.
Thank you,
-Jim G.