Shipping Rates

[juliatevis]

Speaking of shippers, anyone know a good shipper out of Florida? Sun Delivery will pick up a small table in Tampa and deliver to VA, but there is a $365 surcharge for just going to Florida. That makes delivery total over $500. It seems Florida is out of their usual territory.

[organic_smallhome]

I've had very good luck using UShip, and highly recommend it.

[drcollie]

www.uship.com is a good source, but of course you're picking and choosing from several operations, and some will be better than others.

[Conflicted]

Thanks for posting the SUN rates, very helpful! A couple of questions:

1) Are the accessorial charges from SUN charged on a per piece basis or a per shipment basis? In other words, if I have a recliner and a sofa shipped together do I need to add $75 to the mileage and gas charge or $150?

2) it looks like there is a $100 insurance charge for every 4 pieces. Am I reading this correctly?

Also, I believe I read in one of your posts that your store sometimes does long distance deliveries but I can't find the information. Can you point me to the right post? I am curious wether this would make sense for me as I may have as many as 6 pieces being delivered to a location about 4.5 hours from your store.

Thanks!

[drcollie]

Rates are per SHIPMENT, and they are done by weight. A sofa is a minimum of 225 lb, a recliner is a minimum of 125 lb. So thats a minimum of 350 lbs. It can be more if they weigh more than that - but not less. You do that computations by rate for your area and add the fuel surcharge (currently 1.31 %) and then add $ 75. If you split your order into two or more different makers, you have to rate it as a new ship for every pickup at a different location (i.e. Hancock and Moore and Jessica Charles would be two different ships).

The "additional insured" applies to some commercial buildings where the building owner requires the Sun Delivery people to name them on their insurance policy before they can set foot on the property to deliver. Its a real PITA but rarely comes up outside of NYC deliveries into high rises.

We do deliveries at $ 110 per hour outbound from my store - BUT - you pay a higher price for the goods because I use a different factor rate on local vs internet for pricing. I have to pay freight to my store and unpack it, so local pieces will have a higher price than ones going on the delivery service. Practically speaking two hours out is about the limit for cost effectiveness.

[drcollie]

An update to this sticky....

Shipping is not inexpensive. Customers sometimes seem to be stunned when they get the shipping/delivery quotes and I get a lot of 'there must be a cheaper way', but if there is - I don't know what it would be. You can ALWAYS source your own shipper and put a post out on www.uship.com and see if anyone will bid your job. Even UPS has become costly. I shipped a small candlestand to a customer in Louisiana last week via UPS and it was $ 238. I shipped a single recliner from my store to New York City via Common Carrier last week as well - that was $ 278 for barebones service (dropped off at the curb) and that's only 5 hours away.

I know why its costly. While Unleaded gas is cheap, Diesel is not. Traffic, especially on the East Coast, is terrible resulting in long trips. Trucks have become more expensive to buy and maintain, Insurance - ho boy - Commercial truck liability insurance is insane, and finally drivers want to be paid a decent, living wage. And it is never going to be less costly. I think as a very general rule of thumb on furniture you can look at the purchase price of items and allow for 8 to 12% on shipping costs, that seems to be a formula that holds true in a lot of instances. Keep in mind too, that you can always pick up yourself at a factory and haul yourself if you like.

[drcollie]

removing stickey