MTFCA Forum

We've all griped about it before, but shipping even the smallest part is finally getting ridiculous. I have to send my ball cap for rebabbiting, along with the drive plate to get it ground true. So, I've spent most of the day bouncing all over the internet trying to make sense of shipping charges. It doesn't matter which shipper you choose, Fedex, UPS, USPS......all their websites are a confusing clog of options, weights, sizes, etc.

The folks at Snyder's told me that Fedex has a new $10 shipping fee. Do you think I could find anything about it on their website? Nooo......
The UPS website seems to think I'm going to ship a solid piece of cast iron in a one cubic foot box. That's the way their pricing works anyway.

I'm just going to put it in the smallest box that fits and take it to the Post Office, then have them send it via surface mail. Sigh.

Last week I sent 12 old glass telephone insulators to a collector in Ontario, Canada.
Small ones. Double boxed with foam and bubble wrap to minimize weight, it cost
$70 and change ! This was not a sale. Just a gift to a guy who likes these things.
I was shocked.

Sent my rims and hubs off to Stutzman’s for rebuilding today. Sent with UPS and that was $120. Then again, it was an 80lb. box.

The TV telemarketers and even Amazon offers “Free Shipping”. I guess they have a special pricing arrangement with those shippers. When we go to ship something the same size, they really stick it to us. Especially UPS and Fedex. I do most of my shipping these days via USPS priority mail if at all possible. Seems to be more cost effective.

Going a little bit sideways on this, I worked for a couple years in a large UPS sort facility.
I will NEVER ship ANYTHING remotely fragile via UPS. The sorting system and over-the-road
methods allow a totally random loading of Uncle Ernie's Model T block on top of Grandma's
19th century crystal. If the crystal comes down the chute early in the loading of a trailer, it
can have ten feet of axle shafts and bowling balls loaded in on top of it.

USPS loads their Priority Mail into special roller-mounted aluminum boxes that specifically
fit into aircraft. The design allows a maximum of perhaps six feet of stacking inside each box.
Last check, USPS will not handle the rough and heavy stuff that UPS will.

Costs aside, when it comes to fragile items that USPS will handle, the way in which they move
parcels is far less likely to break them in transit.

On the flip side, I spent a couple years on a Federal job, retrofitting facilities for security
after 9-11. Many of these facilities were larger USPS "mains", where I was repeatedly horrified
to watch package sorters "shooting three pointers" into basket carts some 20-30 feet away. I
alerted the Postmaster each time, but continued to see it happening at all of the facilities we
worked on.

If you have to ship fragile items, pack them as if they will be tossed off a truck and rolled
down the freeway to their destination.

I was told by a UPS depot supervisor that if you write "Top Freight Only" on top of a fragile package (duly marked) that UPS is rule-bound to honor that.

There are 2 UPS stores that take items for shipping within five miles of me. I packed up a magneto/flywheel in a plywood box. If I remember correctly it was 20" X 20" X 7" and around 90 lbs. One store quoted $250 over the phone, the other $150, and when I took it by to ship it, it actually shipped for $90. Those locally owned stores are an aggravation without consistent pricing and often a rip off.

But help is on the way! Amazon has started its own delivery service with its own vehicles and uniformed drivers. Once they get established they will not only ship their own PRIME stuff, but also start shipping personal items. Amazon is taking over the world.

They ship with pride...World wide!...
I think I know what happened to my package.

The UPS flat rate boxes are supposed to be a good buy weight wise when something is heavy. Has to fit of course.

R.V.Anderson wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 1:31 pm

I was told by a UPS depot supervisor that if you write "Top Freight Only" on top of a fragile package (duly marked) that UPS is rule-bound to honor that.

======================================

At the UPS sort, a trailer is backed to a special sloped loading dock. The center of the floors
in the trailers are rollers. Once the trailer is stopped against the bumpers, the door is opened
and an avalanche of boxes falls to the floor of the dock where a similar roller system slopes away
to the conveyor belt that carries ALL parcels to the sort. Clearing the avalanche to the rollers to
gain work space, the still-stacked parcels are then toppled to the rollers and roll away by gravity.

Now, to be fair, we made *some* effort to ease the fall of the packages by maintaining a slope
to the parcels, tumbling the high ones down across the lower ones to reduce any real impact from
falling. Still, they are not really handled with any care. The only packages that get any sort of
handling at this stage are the ones in the underbelly, which is below the rollers, and must be picked
up from the bottom floor and set on the rollers. This is all timed, and if an unloader could not meet
the set times, they were no longer employed.

On the load side, the packages are sorted by regional destination and sent along miles of conveyors
to tip off onto a roller system sloped the opposite direction of the unload, and all the packages come
down the chute, hit the trailer floor roller, and go as far into the trailer as the loader can take them
off and stack them, checking a memorized regional zip code group that this trailer will get towed to
next. This is also timed, and a loader will get canned for not meeting a breakneck speed minimum.
This is where Uncle Ernie's Model T engine block ends up stacked on top of Grandma's crystal set,
because there isn't a human alive that can remember (or even know) where the fragile stuff got
placed as the madhouse pace of boxes comes down the chute.

Supervisor's promise or not, I worked there. There is no way a loader or unloader can know what
is fragile from not when they tumble the boxes off the unload tip, and no time to read anything but
the zip code to make sure the package bound to Atlanta does not mistakenly get sent to Phoenix,
and cost the company extra handling, delays, complaints as a result.

Being that guy who does a fair amount of shipping, I tried to set aside stuff I thought could be
crushed to top loading and based my wall stacks with the heaviest boxes that came down the chute.
But I was the only one out of 25 people doing that job who gave a rip.

We're well out of town. Far enough that fuel is a real consideration. The best deal going is shopping at COSTCO on-line. If you order $75+ worth of food, shipping is free. We just received three 25# bags of flour, one 25# bag of sugar and lots and lots of other stuff. Came in 4 boxes: 14 x 14 x 32. 100+ lbs of food. Shipped Free.

Additionally, you DON'T have to be a member. Just add 5% to the order and you're good to go. So $75 times 1.05 = $78.75 delivered to my door via UPS with 2 day delivery. Now that's a deal.

Those staples will last us for many, many months. At our old home before we moved, that would not have bought dinner for 2 at a nice restaurant. Where you live is a choice, and lots of people make very bad choices.

For larger items, I'm trying out Fastenal with a pair of rear steel tractor wheels from Tennessee. Probly 3 or 4 hundred pounds.
$175.00 shipping.
A couple of years ago: Parts for a Vaporizer $23.00. Shipping $25.00.
The company I work at part time is one of suppliers for Amazon's fleet of equipment and they should really get rolling this summer.
Seems like May is their official starting date at their air hubs or some-such. They'll be using Cans (containers) like the other air shippers.