shipping advice?

[samfuq]

Does anyone have ideas on shipping a bass across the country? A custom built crate and shipping charges for same is prohibitively expensive for the value of the instrument I'm considering purchasing.
Thanks for any help.

[nicklloyd]

Find someone in your area that sells Chrisptoher, Eastman, or Shen basses. You could get (from them) a cardboard container that these instruments come in, and then re-use it for your purpose.

[Bob Gollihur]

My generic advice:
You'll need to ship it by truck, and unfortunately, unless you have an agreement through work or someone with a business, the "retail" walk-in customer pays an absolute fortune. Discounts of 40% and more are given to businesses. Often you are best off going to one of the chain shipping companies, not the little mailbox ones but those that deal more with commercial customers, even some UPS stores-- they have databases for devising shipping crates and/or boxes, and even though you pay more to have someone make the container, this way you are confidently covered by insurance. Trucking companies are notorious for breaking stuff, and they'll be happy to blame it on your packaging- can't blame you if "they" did it themselves! It won't be cheap, but it is probably your best bet.

This was confirmed earlier this year with a UPS Store packed bass-- unfortunately it was put on it's head (violently, I'll assume) which broke the neck. The insurance took care of it since the UPS store packed AND shipped the bass. If the customer had done so, you'd be totally out of luck.

OTOH, if you were in my area you'd be welcome to a box as well.

[Ed Fuqua]

Hey Sam. Us fuqua's gotta stick together.
Who are you buying the bass from? If it's a luthier or shop, they generally are pretty cool about shipping it in a bass case. You just have to pay to ship it back.

That's one problem with buying a cheap bass though, it costs the same as a Panormo to ship (insurance is cheaper tho'). And then it's gotta come by trucking company; maybe talk/type to Steve (posts here under the name greene, he ships a LOT of basses out of NYC, I'm sure he would have some good advice.

[John Sprague]

Hey Sam,
We ship basses every week, all over the country. We've tried everything once, and have broken many basses. There is only one successful way to ship a bass, imho:

-Put it in a box, padded on the bottom where the endpin sits.
-Strap it, standing up, to a full sized pallet. No banding equipment? Try the ratchet straps for $5 from the hardware store.
-Mark the box with "fragile" and "must remain on pallet".
-Insure, and insist on inspection on delivery before anyone signs for it. The recipient must do this. "Hidden damge" claims after signing are like Santa Claus, they don't really exist.
-Fed-Ex Freight is the cheapest and the one with the least number of "handlings" from point to point that I know of.

That's it.

[samfuq]

thanks...this is all helpful