What's the best and cheapest way to ship a completed guitar to a customer?
When I checked with UPS it was $70 to send a single guitar to California.
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What's the best and cheapest way to ship a completed guitar to a customer?
When I checked with UPS it was $70 to send a single guitar to California.
You need to be a member of Cigar Box Nation to add comments!
Replies
Thanks for all the good information guys Tommy (TOMCAT) Ragan.
I go to my local music store and they'll happily give me a triangular box that a child's guitar came in from their trash, they always have em.
I'd just like to add that i've posted guitars all over the place but primarily in my home country of Australia. The United States Postal Service is the only national postal service to have ever destroyed one of my builds. And they've done it TWICE. I wrap a CBG or tin guitar in a single sheet of bubble wrap, and into that cardboard box and I'm fine. UNLESS IT'S TO THE USA. If so then it will need additional marine plywood and a Papal blessing.
I use the unline boxes like John Sawyer. Dan Sleep told me about them. Quick, easy, cheap enough and they save on shipping compared to what I used to do. Size does matter.
Do you cut them down, or use them full-size?
I wrap bubble wrap around the whole thing several times, then use flat cardboard and parcel tape and wrap it around the guitar pretty much so that it's still the same shape but bomb proof. It ends up not much bigger or heavier than the actual guitar and here in sunny Scotland it costs me something like £12 - £15 and that's Parcelforce, I could probably get cheaper from another courier.
I would make my own boxes out of flat cardboard - it sometimes seemed that it took longer than the CBG !!! It took all the joy out of the build.
Getting custom boxes should be that expensive: here in the UK I get mine made for about $1.50. minimum order of 25. You should be able to find plenty of people out there on the web making custom packing boxes.
I did find one company willing to make them for $3, but shipping for 20 of them cost $33. ugh. Still looking.
Just ordered from ULine: 20: 34x10x6. $51 shipped. Since the boxes are a little high, I figure I can cut down one dimension. USPS Priority mail is $20ish paid online, for a box 35x10x4. Parcel post is like $15. (The extra sub $5 is worth the faster turnaround and tracking...)
I'll let you know how it goes.
That seems steep - I have used a company called Flagship, they co-ordinate everything thru all the other regular couriers and it cost about $25 from up here in Ontario down to Indiana. See if you can find a company that acts as a broker of sorts. The way it works is, if you are a large quantity shipper, you get better rates and the couriers don't care if it is picked up, second party and shipped to third party. I can't explain it very well.
Maybe this explains it better - http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3333-Reducing-Shipping-C...
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