Shipping

You are right, Beth, shipping costs ARE outrageous. I sold about 10 or so locomotives to individual buyers recently and lost a bit of $ on every order, even though I did my best to accurately determine shipping charges. I elected to ship via USPS Priority Mail/Insured in all cases because USPS did better, cost wise, than either UPS or FedEx. Also have no problems in getting the properly packed boxes to each of the recipients, with addresses ranging from Maine to Washington State and California, and everywhere in between. Shipping to the west coast (from Ohio) was easily the most outrageous, but could have been a bit cheaper if I had chosen Ground shipping (which I did not and will not do unless a buyer asks for it).

Allan Miller posted:

..........Shipping to the west coast (from Ohio) was easily the most outrageous, but could have been a bit cheaper if I had chosen Ground shipping (which I did not and will not do unless a buyer asks for it).

Like Allan, based on my experience, shipping to the west coast is more expensive than to other parts of the country, for some reason. I also always use USPS Priority Mail, and have had pretty good luck with it over the years. I don't do ground, either. Among other things, as I was told by a postal employee years ago, Priority is handled a lot less in transit, which reduces the chance of damage.

I recently shipped a MTH Southern Railway Ps4 from the southeast to California.   Cost was $35.00 with insurance via FedEx Ground which was the cheapest of USPS or UPS.

Neal Jeter

Shipped a Lionel Milwaukee Road S3 Northern to California last November via UPS ground and it was just shy of $50 bucks, OUCH!

Try living in Canada = $CDN to $USD = 40%  AND Customs AND Outrageous shipping, etc etc AND not near as much inventory as in the USA.     eBay uses the 'Global Shipping Program' which is a farce unto itself.   ok.  done with my 'rant'   ;-)

USPS is the cheaps to a point

UPS & FedEx jumped on the surcharge bandwagon a number of years ago when fuel prices shot up.  Over the years when those fuel prices dropped to some of the lowest in decades both of those shippers never responded by lowering their prices back to pre high fuel prices.

RichardVB posted:

Try living in Canada = $CDN to $USD = 40%  AND Customs AND Outrageous shipping, etc etc AND not near as much inventory as in the USA.     eBay uses the 'Global Shipping Program' which is a farce unto itself.   ok.  done with my 'rant'   ;-)

I got mixed up in that “global shipping” crap a couple years ago, never again. What a nightmare.

breezinup posted:

Allan Miller posted:

..........Shipping to the west coast (from Ohio) was easily the most outrageous, but could have been a bit cheaper if I had chosen Ground shipping (which I did not and will not do unless a buyer asks for it).

Like Allan, based on my experience, shipping to the west coast is more expensive than to other parts of the country, for some reason. I also always use USPS Priority Mail, and have had pretty good luck with it over the years. I don't do ground, either. Among other things, as I was told by a postal employee years ago, Priority is handled a lot less in transit, which reduces the chance of damage.

We live in California. Shipping the reverse - back East - is of ciurse the same. We shipped a small 4-4-2 Lionel starter set steam loco and tender in its original box from here to Zputtsburgh thisweek: $30 via UPS Ground. That was still cheaper than Zpriority Mail. And this cost for an item w3 got $99 for on Ebay (less fees, etc.). 

Train sets are impossible. $60-70 to ship a starter set back East by any means. It makes it almost impossible to break even on sets.  The last set we sold on Ebay was a local pick-up. I think if I need to sell any more sets, I will go the local pick-up route. Living in the L.A. metro area, at least I have a lot of potential buyers nearby.

But overall, shipping costs are a killer these days. Even shipping a boxcar can run $15 or more depending upon destination.