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The worst is when UPS or Express Mail comes on a Friday, and I don't hear them, and it's not possible to get it until Monday, when I needed the parts for work over the weekend.

Use ANY method that doesn't require a signature.

My USPS driver will always come to the front door, knock, wait, and if I'm not home he'll leave it in a plastic bag on the doorstep.

My Fedex Ground driver will always either write "no such address" on the package and send it back from whence it came, or drop kick it a few times and then leave it four houses down in someone's back yard where it won't be discovered until next spring. True story...

bbocaner wrote:My USPS driver will always come to the front door, knock, wait, and if I'm not home he'll leave it in a plastic bag on the doorstep.

My Fedex Ground driver will always either write "no such address" on the package and send it back from whence it came, or drop kick it a few times and then leave it four houses down in someone's back yard where it won't be discovered until next spring. True story...

I have to agree with this. My USPS mail carrier is much better in handling my packages than the FedEx and UPS drivers in my area. I had a UPS driver leave a package at the side door when the front door was clearly open and people were inside. I saw the truck and was on my way to the door when I saw him coming back down the drive and he said "I left it at the side door". He then got in his truck and left. If I had not seen him, I may not have known the package was there until the next morning when I left for work.

Bloke, your mail carrier, quite simply, sucks. My mom had a mail carrier that sounds like the FedEx carrier that "bbocaner" has. At least he was that way, until an old lady took him hostage at gunpoint for "messing with her mail"

It varies from place to place. I've never had Fedex fail to find my house in the middle of nowhere, and they've never damaged a package. UPS has damaged item after item (including my current tuba), has returned packages to the terminal and stamped it "no such address" many times, and has dropped packages for me at my wife's school rather than deliver (which will be a problem when she retires at the end of the year).

I live on a dirt road that has no name. A few years ago, the USPS allowed rural carriers to deliver packages to the doorsteps of recipients if the packages are too big for the box. There's a substitute carrier in our area who regularly sends those packages back to the local branch and leaves a note in the box; the regular carrier delivers them the next day that she's back. She's one of the really good ones.

Most of the time... FEDEX, UPS, and USPS does a very good job of finding me. All of the regular drivers know to come to the shop door at the read of my home to deliver packages. The only time there seems to be a problem is when additional drivers are put on for holidays and vacation replacements.

Now... for the record... I DID NOT mean to imply that I vouch for those services. I only use them for small items that run a very low risk of being destroyed in transit.

TubaTinker wrote: Now... for the record... I DID NOT mean to imply that I vouch for those services. I only use them for small items that run a very low risk of being destroyed in transit.

Who do you use when you want something handled with great care?

BRSousa wrote:

TubaTinker wrote: Now... for the record... I DID NOT mean to imply that I vouch for those services. I only use them for small items that run a very low risk of being destroyed in transit.

Who do you use when you want something handled with great care?

I deliver/pick it up myself or go Greyhound.

I drove twelve hours on Thursday to pick up two helicons that I didn't want shipped. Glad I did. Both horns have perfect bells.

TubaTinker wrote:

BRSousa wrote:

TubaTinker wrote: Now... for the record... I DID NOT mean to imply that I vouch for those services. I only use them for small items that run a very low risk of being destroyed in transit.

Who do you use when you want something handled with great care?

I deliver/pick it up myself or go Greyhound.

I drove twelve hours on Thursday to pick up two helicons that I didn't want shipped. Glad I did. Both horns have perfect bells.

As always great advice. It is a shame that there are fewer Greyhound locations everyday.

BRSousa wrote:

TubaTinker wrote:...I deliver/pick it up myself or go Greyhound...

As always great advice. It is a shame that there are fewer Greyhound locations everyday.

Greyhound isn't perfect, though. I sent a tuba down to Texas last year, and what was supposed to take three days took a couple of weeks. Nerves were frayed badly by the time it arrived. Greyhound has no tracking, poor security, and poor priority service. But if you are shipping from hub to hub, where you can watch it get put on a bus and the guy at the other end can be there when it's taken off the same bus, it's great.

Last time I had my tuba worked on, drove from here to Memphis to get it. Worth it.

The only reliable shipping method I know of is by truck, but that often requires chasing the truck all over the city, unless you have a loading dock. Trucks allow proper cardboard shipping boxes that are strapped down to a pallet, which is about as good a way to pack a tuba as there is.

Rick "who tries to ship to accommodate to the situation of the guy at the other end" Denney

"You pays your money and takes your chance"

bloke wrote:hmm...

...discussing station-to-station service via GREYHOUND, when the topic originated as "how to send small boxes of parts directly to repair-guys' shops"...???

bloke "a typical tubenet thread"

Only because someone asked. Ain't America great?!