My conclusion is that it's not the overall company that is competent or incompetent. Rather, it is the individual people who you are dealing with, and who are handling your particular package.
The company may have an overall 'corporate culture' that pervades, but the individual people may or may not choose to conform to a particular company culture, based on their personal principals, values, ethics, and commitment to good customer service. I am pretty sure it would be easy to find plenty of examples of both excellent service and pathetic service from each of the couriers.
Ultimate Basses had a horrible experience with FedEx which resulted in the ruin of a several thousand dollar MTD bass. FedEx is not responsible for your packages to be climate or temperature controlled. They made a comical recreation of the process they underwent, but the loss to the business was very real.
So, essentially, you roll the dice with every shipment
I think this true about rolling the dice and I also think it true that different regions may have better results with one carrier over another. - but one CAN stack the odds in their favor by paying special attention to packing and shipping times. In 5 years we have only had ONE bass damaged and one guitar destroyed.
Both times we had damage, the packages had a weekend layover. Coincidence? Possibly and even probably, but I pay attention to statistical facts, even with such a small amount of data.
Also I examined the local truck routes. Well, they don't air condition those trucks and heating in the winter...the doors are opening regularly, so up and down. So in the dead of winter and the hot of summer, I don't put packages on the trucks and instead drive the packages to a heated/air conditioned holding area. The packages get picked up late in the day instead of riding around on bumpy roads all day with the hot/cold cycle. I try to always ship out on Monday & Tuesday and also try to have my basses from Dingwall & other manufacturers shipped out same. This helps to insure that they do not sit in a warehouse over the weekend. Some say it makes no difference and I don't really know for sure, but I certainly feel better about the delivery.
Way overthinking it? Probably just my freakin OCD.
Then we have packing. The damage to the one bass we had was a hole poked in from the back of the bass and hit the body. The guitar - well, there was nothing that could have been done - a forklift tine went right through the box and broke the neck into 2 pieces. After these occurrences I started packing like the pic below. What we do is put a gigbag in front of an inner box where the bass is secured and padded in the inner box. By doing this, if a hole gets punched through we have a really good chance of it not damaging the front of the bass. We then cut, from another box, an entire lining for the back side of the inner box. This lining is the width of the main box and covers entirely the back of the outer box. This lining also has about a 6 tp 8 inch lip which folds over the entire contents, making the bass have 4 layers of box at the neck. We position the inner box slightly off center enough to stuff air pillows down one side, then the other side gets the air pillows. Finally a small bubble wrap layer over the top before we do the foldover.
All this overkill? Perhaps. A better way to do it? Probably so. It does add to both our packing material cost and shipping weight cost. But, I can't argue with only one damaged bass in 5 years in which we moved quite a few basses and I feel the extra attention is quite worth it.
Oh, and don't think just because you insure something that it will be easy to collect. These companies farm that out to outside companies which make it as difficult as possible to collect, at least they did in my cases - I actually had to eat both the bass and guitar costs.
Moral of story, anything CAN get damaged by ANY carrier so be sure to do everything you can possibly do to insure that it is not.
Here is the pic. The slightly ratty cardboard piece is the inner liner which folds over the inner box.
