HeliconMan wrote:My 2 piece Conn cost $37.70 to ship UPS Ground. If I do wind up having to ship it somewhere, I might try Amtrak or Greyhound since they seem to be fairly reputable with shipping tubas. $250 is a ROYAL ripoff. I mean, that Yamaha might weight 70lbs to ship. My horn was supposedly 106lbs total. I don't quite believe that, but if they shipped for $37.70 that's still pretty good.
When I shipped MY two-piece Conn to its buyer in Maine, I told him I'd charge $75 for shipping. The only person I ripped off was myself.
I had to have two boxes custom-made to fit within the UPS shipping requirements but to be big enough for the two parts. The custom boxes were $37 and $42, respectively, for the bell box and the body box. Then, I stuffed them with $30 worth of bubble wrap, bought at Staples, but still had space left over. I filled that space with $15 worth of still-in-plastic rolls of paper towels (which was cheaper than any alternatives for that much space and cushion). I used about $3 worth of tape to assemble those boxes securely. What am I up to? $127. Then, I paid about $70 for insured shipping. The two trips to the packaging store that made the boxes, plus the trip to UPS, plus the time required to apply all that bubble wrap, took me four hours. If I'm a dealer, that four hours is four hours I would not be earning money from another customer. At current rates, that would be about $300 in labor. That adds up to $427.
Yes, I could have done it cheaper. But I didn't have cases to use, and I didn't want to have to exercise UPS's insurance, so perhaps I went a little overboard. Even so, don't underestimate the cost of custom cartons and packaging bought in small quantities at retail.
Of course, a dealer would not have to work as hard to obtain the packing materials as I did, given that he would do it all the time and could possibly get some of it wholesale. But I submit that if you include his time (as he must if he's going to stay in business without building such time into his overhead and therefore charging higher rates to everyone), $250 to package and ship a large, two-piece tuba is perhaps high but definitely not outrageous. New tubas don't cost as much to ship because the price of the cartons and packaging is built into the purchase price, not the shipping costs. The dealer just uses the same materials received from the manufacturer. But used tubas don't usually come with boxes and packaging already.
Rick "speaking from real experience" Denney
