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vicrider

AARRRGGGHHHH, I'm a Pirate now,

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As a mod I don't really know if we should be pushing one company over another but enough people, including me, have been burnt by the new USPS rates and on recommendation of a couple of people I dug into the Pirate Ship shipping costs. What I didn't expect was to find how easy it is to setup, print labels yourself for your packages, save real money, and then let the USPS do your shipping. I don't understand exactly how this works and am not going to spend time trying to figure it out but I'm assuming there is some sort of agreement behind closed doors that if we do the heavy lifting of weighing, measuring, and labeling our products ready to go then PO and UPS gives them a break on costs enough for them to make a profit, which I'm sure is why they're in business.

https://www.pirateship.com/

Okay, after I got (with the help of my son) the printer set up on my computer and I did a few simple answers on the site I established an email and password account. I've shipped several packages recently and it's really simple and for a 78 year old guy who once said he'd never turn on a computer that's really saying something. You need a physical address but then you can put a PO Box as your return address like I did. Once that's established you type in name and address of recipient, go down and select type of package (box, bubble wrap, etc.), weigh the item, hit rates and it will give you PO and UPS rates and their savings rate.

On four packages I sent I saved about $10 dollars. Had I done this on a bunch of things I sent recently it would have easily been $20+ which for you deep pockets is nothing but for a S.S. guy I'll take it. As of right now if you (or I) are going to send a rod the way to go is UPS and not PO. These are the rates I just looked up to send a rod at 4' long weighing 4 lbs. from OK to IL.
UPS Ground, $10.13 - UPS 3 day select, $12.86 - UPS 2nd day air, $17.59
USPS Ground, $25.11 - USPS Priority, $26.54

Those rates are better than USPS but do include their new $15 surcharge and UPS does not, at least yet. All of the shipping gives you tracking label with your return, the recipient, and tracking # and all those line and bars that mean something to someone somewhere. With all the talk recently about USPS rates I can only say for myself that I found this easy, fast, no lines at PO for them to weigh and sticker, and just now I sent a small bubble wrap pakage with flies for a fly swap the PO would get $4.75 for and Pirate Ship is $3.48. Since my bank acc't. is hooked to paypal like a lot of people have I just send with paypal and they pull the money from my acc't at no charge. Now a $1.27 is not a huge savings but I'll take it.

NOTE: I typed this over a month ago on a different forum and since have added peel off label paper to my printer and this is really slick. No lines at PO, wait to weigh, wait to stamp, you do it all yourself and then just drop off packages with several dollars of savings.

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That's what we do, (20 years now) but with a different company. It's a good deal. It's really no secret though, you are doing all of the administrative work. That's why it's cheaper.

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Admin, Mark, yes ... but also bulk I would think.  

My company used to contract me out to another company teach their dealership courses.  I'm not saying the names, just to be "legal".  The company I taught for is FedEx's largest customer, shipping more in one year than most do in 4.  Because of that, their shipping charges were ... ridiculously low.  I.E. shipping a "Pelican" brand tool case cost us $120.00 with UPS on average, when we're doing government classes.  When we taught dealer classes, we used their FedEx account and paid $26.00 for the same box.  UPS is less expensive that FedEx, so I don't know what the actual savings are.

So, I assume this "pirate ship" company has worked out a bulk rate deal with USPS.  

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23 hours ago, mikechell said:

Admin, Mark, yes ... but also bulk I would think.  

My company used to contract me out to another company teach their dealership courses.  I'm not saying the names, just to be "legal".  The company I taught for is FedEx's largest customer, shipping more in one year than most do in 4.  Because of that, their shipping charges were ... ridiculously low.  I.E. shipping a "Pelican" brand tool case cost us $120.00 with UPS on average, when we're doing government classes.  When we taught dealer classes, we used their FedEx account and paid $26.00 for the same box.  UPS is less expensive that FedEx, so I don't know what the actual savings are.

So, I assume this "pirate ship" company has worked out a bulk rate deal with USPS.  

Could be.

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Yep, just sent another package and saved $3.50 on a small package of items. Pirateship also keeps a running log of where you sent and how much postage was. Not a big deal if you're just shipping a few odds and ends you're selling like I am but for a business it would be really nice. 

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It's still USPS and ups, it's just that you order and print out your label at home via the pirate ship website. You take your package to the post office or ups store, prepackaged and prelabeled. It's very convenient actually, you might find you prefer it. I know I do. But you do have to pack it and weigh and measure it yourself (and label it) from home.

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On 6/12/2022 at 1:07 PM, vicrider said:

No lines at PO, wait to weigh, wait to stamp, you do it all yourself and then just drop off packages with several dollars of savings.

 

On 6/23/2022 at 7:17 PM, chugbug27 said:

It's very convenient actually, you might find you prefer it.

Used it for the first time this week for the Venison Swap, saved me $1.26 for each envelope, so $2.52 total.  👍

I took the package to the PO window to drop it off.  

The clerk told me I could just put it in my mailbox with the flag up and they would pick it up and scan it when they dropped off my mail.  👍👍

 

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