I know that this doesn’t qualify AT ALL as a Cozy mystery book entry, but we just found out about this information and I thought of all of the money I have wasted by not knowing about it… I am guessing that there are a lot of you out there who have been doing the same wa$teful thing, al$o. So, here goes:
For years, I have been shipping packages to my mother and brother (from San Antonio) to Colorado Springs. Each year, I always thought I was so clever to be able to cram as many of the Christmas and birthday packages into one large box as possible. Usually that meant that I sent about three large boxes for Christmas and another two large boxes for birthdays. Wasn’t I clever?!? I always RE-use the styrofoam popcorn I receive throughout the year by placing it gingerly between the breakable items and the non-breakable. Oh boy! Does this large box have room for yet another package?
Back to the reason for this post>>>
My daughter is leaving for the Boston area this week, and since it would have taken us three days to drive there with our car absolutely stuffed to the top (which meant two nights in a hotel each way of the trip) we decided to price what it would cost to ship all of her “necessities” for the three years she will be out there.
Boy!!! Was I ready for this challenge! I had been saving all of the largest of our boxes for quite some time, to use for my Colorado Springs Christmas and birthday shipping…
What a surprise to find out (my husband searched around on the internet to price different shipping costs) that UPS has a very $ub$tantial price hike after you hit a certain size of box. It appears that UPS calculates the square inches of each box, and after a certain amount of square inches you pay a huge (what I call) penalty. [In case you are interested in seeing the square inches, the place he found is Uline. It even tells you how to calculate UPS’ DIM (“dimensional weight”) guideline: 3 cubic feet (5,184 cubic inches)… And since I haven’t needed to calculate cubic inches since high school geometry, I appreciated the help!] Each of our boxes weighed under 50 pounds, which seemed to be the weight limit for the box size that we chose to use. I was actually surprised by how much stuff I could stuff into a box and still keep it under 50 pounds.
We ended up sending twelve of the correct square-inched boxes, which will be waiting in her dorm room when she arrives. She will be flying to Boston, which will actually end up saving us money on the four nights of hotels, restaurant/fast food stops, and a lot of driving time. Of the three, I will miss the driving time. My daughter and I have a lot of laughs when we drive for long (or short!) distances… But this way, we can use that time more wisely at home.
Dru says
Thanks for the heads-up on that.
Maria BearMountainBooks says
USPS has the same rules, only they are pretty easy to find (or if you ask at the post office they will tell you.) The USPS site probably has the rules as well, but yes, once you get to a bigger box, there is a huge jump and you pay “oversized” fees or something like that.
When I compare prices, USPS is generally the cheaper of the two…but I don’t know that I’ve shipped anything that heavy!!!
These days shipping is getting a lot costlier. I used to be able to mail a book for under 2 dollars–it’s over that now for a paperback and almost 3 or sometimes over for a hardback.
They blamed it on rising gas prices, but I noticed no one lowered their prices when gas prices went back down.
Hmph.
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Maria,
I’m wondering if everyone other than me knew about the huge jump in prices! That oversize fee is something like $50!!! We ended up paying around a dollar a pound… which is very different than what I paid in the past!
Maria BearMountainBooks says
I learned about it in college when I tried to ship skis home. Skis are not particularly heavy, but I think they hit the oversized limit thing TWICE because they are so long. It was ridiculous and required special packaging…
I only know the USPS has the same sort of thing because I was behind someone in line that ended up repacking their box when they were told it was cheaper to send two boxes because theirs was giant.
They get you. Coming, going and standing still!
Edie Dykeman says
Thank you for the info. I send packages to my daughter, from MI to TX, and didn’t realize there was this much of a difference in cost related to size. This is very valuable info for those of us who frequently ship packages.
And hopefully your daughter will appreciate the welcome-to-her-new-home packages.
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Hi Edie,
The packages we sent were actually all of her clothes, bedding, etc. (No cookies or surprises!) She helped with the packing and sending.
As for the UPS pricing… I was quite surprised to find out about the box sizes making such a difference in shipping costs.