USPS Flat rate boxes

[severum mama]

Y'all should see the difference in online pricing for Express Mail! I sent a box of fish over to California a few weeks ago and saved myself (and the customer) about $10 just on that one box by printing it online.

Just a thought... if you're shipping enough plants to go up to a medium flat rate, chances are it's going to be cheaper to order the non flat rate boxes online and ship by weight. Doesn't help much if you don't have your own scale, but just thought I'd add that in.

Oh, and the free delivery confirmation service alone is a $.70 savings per box.

 

[fort384]

Honestly, I have just estimated a weight before and filled it in, and have never had 1 sent back to me... and Marcie is right... if you are going bigger than small flat rate, it will be cheaper to ship by weight. You can fit an awful lot of plants in that small flat rate box though.

 

[jetajockey]

I agree. I honestly ship most of my plants first class and its even cheaper, even substantially large plant shipments weigh very little. You can do first class for packages <13oz, usually ending up at $3 or less per envelope.

If you plan on shipping with any sort of regularity at all then its worth the initial investment in a postal scale.

 

[fort384]

Dave is right too... I have always just been to lazy to figure out how to go about shipping 1st class, since with priority the shipping materials are provided free of charge and delivered to my door. The plants would certainly be fine for an extra few days in the dark, and if you plan to ship in any kind of recurring volume, the savings would be substantial.

 

[jetajockey]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that part, you do have to provide bubble mailers if you send first class. This is cheap if you buy them in bulk, but if you buy them from the big box its not as good of a deal. I get 100 #4 bubble mailers for around $20-25, so the difference is substantial compared to ~$1 each if bought individually.

Another thing worth mentioning is the USPS provided priority flat rate legal envelopes and bubble mailers. It's under $5 bucks and you can cram as much stuff in there as you want. You can even cram the priority large video box (9x6x2) into the flat rate envelope, so it gives you the ability to cram even more things into a package and pay the same rate you would for a small flat rate box.