Shipping a tuba

[cthuba]

So I’m looking to ship a tuba and here’s the questions I have.

What is ya’ll’s carrier of choice?

How do you insure it?

Would you ship with a schlipf mute inside the bell

Tuba is a Gnagey

Thanks

[Mary Ann]

I recently got one via FedEx. It is ALWAYS "YMMV" no matter the carrier. What does matter is how well you pack it, and from your question I'd say you should focus your search on that question. They are generally going to beat the crap out of it and it MUST be padded in every which way possible or you will get something very sad on the other end. I've gotten tubas in HUGE boxes on pallets that had a full foot of peanuts on all sides, and they were undamaged. Not cheap to ship though. My most recent one was in a gig bag that had a lot of room in it, and the big bag was stuffed to the gills with bubble wrap, but was bouncing around a bit in the box, which I would not have preferred but it did arrive ok. Once again, YMMV on all of it.

My instruments are all insured via Clarion, as are many more here. If it is not brand new and is "insured" via the carrier, any damage will be discounted by the carrier as pre-existing, even if the box is damaged. They simply will not pay up.

[bort2.0]

Shipping from where to where?

Tuba taxi is endlessly better than shipping.

My Rudy came to me from Lee Stofer on a shipping crate/pallet. Even that has the risks of a forklift through the box... but I'd take that risk over FedEx or UPS.

[cthuba]

Asheville NC to Phoenix AZ

[bloke]

I might contact a tuba professor type in Ashville, and see if he has a deemed-responsible student with a reliable high-gas-mileage car who might consider such a r/t road trip for $500 - to cover the gas.

It's only a few weeks before school starts back up for college-age children, and young boys with cars find such adventures appealing.

[donn]

4000 miles round trip. If your college student will eat road kill and sleep in his car when possible, $1000 might do it. That's really an ideal scenario - while he's in restaurants and hotels, the tuba could get stolen, and you're not expecting him to make you whole in case of theft or accident.

[bort2.0]

8 years ago, I received a Rudy Meinl 4/4 CC that was shipped by the UPS store in Colorado somewhere.

Horrible packing
Crushed bell

They sent an adjuster to my apartment to look at it.
He shook his head and said something like "damn they thought that..."

About a week or two passed with no update.
I called the UPS store
He told me to send a repair quote, which I did for I think $2500.

Two days later, I had a check for $2500.

YMMV, and it will vary a lot. I got lucky as hell.

[bloke]

@donn

love u 2, sweetie pie.

[donn]

He shook his head and said something like "damn they thought that..."

As in, the UPS store didn't do a satisfactory job packing it up?

That seems to me like kind of a common theme in complaints about damaged tubas delivered by UPS: packed by the store. Or of course packed very poorly by the seller, but I'm just suggesting that maybe letting the store do it is really not such a good idea either.

[bort2.0]

He shook his head and said something like "damn they thought that..."

As in, the UPS store didn't do a satisfactory job packing it up?

That seems to me like kind of a common theme in complaints about damaged tubas delivered by UPS: packed by the store. Or of course packed very poorly by the seller, but I'm just suggesting that maybe letting the store do it is really not such a good idea either.

It was like (paraphrasing) "damn, they thought that this was going to do anything? This is horrible packaging, it's a miracle it wasnt even worse"

[cthuba]

So would shipping a schlipf mute inside the tuba be a bad idea?

[the elephant]

@donn

love u 2, sweetie pie.

He is right, though. The gas would be no less than $600 for a college student-type car at today's current price (national average) and it would take about ten days, round trip. (You can't expect anyone to put in more than 500 miles in a day in a student type of car in our current heat. Even Motel6 is above $70 a night on much of that route, and that is the bare minimum for lodging so far as nastiness is concerned for many folks. So maybe $600 more for lodging. Then you have 30 meals on the road to consider…

Sorry, but your suggested valuation is as out of touch with reality as telling someone that a night out of dinner and a movie for two should only cost $50 bucks.

[bloke]

Yeah I was basing it on a Toyota Corolla that might get 35 miles per gallon - and gas prices dropping down to about four bucks these days - along the projected route (they’re probably still six bucks in Seattle, yes?), but a college student wouldn’t drive 65 - 70 mph (so even a Toyota Corolla wouldn’t get but about 28 miles per gallon going 80 or 85), they would drive much faster…and today today’s college students wouldn’t sleep in their car or a tent - or drive straight through 1000 or 1200 miles - like I did; they would want a cushy room somewhere and restaurant food… so yeah.

When I was that age, I just wanted to go places as long as I could break even.

I still own a manual shift Corolla is a spare car, but most people buy gigantic cars that don’t even hardly get 20 miles per gallon, yes?
… at least, when they drive up at blokeplace to have their instruments repaired or pick them up, that’s the kind of stuff most people seem to drive.

People are different – certainly 20 year olds – from when I was 20, but - when I was 20 - I probably wasn’t a whole lot like a whole bunch of other 20 year olds. (I get reminded of that when college students - who live a distance away - start communicating with me about having some stuff done, and then they start talking about how their dad is gonna drive them here, etc.)

[donn]

Aside from the economics, though, I wonder about the fundamental premise. Ship 200 tubas across the country, 100 via UPS and 100 via randomly selected people driving their own cars. Which is going to come out at the end without blemish?

We hear a lot of complaints about parcel delivery outfits, but they ship nearly all tubas, am I right? I mean, like 97% or something. So it's natural that the horror stories mention UPS frequently. (And some of that doesn't really count, because as in the above example, the store packed it, and as far as we know that's guaranteed to fail. On the other hand, I think that may be the only way you can get reimbursement, and if so we can't count that as a virtue of UPS.)

And it isn't like nothing can conceivably go wrong with a private driver. The tuba could get stolen. To avoid that, the driver may be lugging the tuba back and forth, so there's some potential for dropping it or banging the valve stems against a door frame. You aren't going to pack the tuba as though it were going UPS - that wouldn't fit in the car - and if it doesn't have a case, it may not even be protected very well from other items traveling along on the trip. The car could get in an accident, or stolen. I wouldn't be surprised that if you could see the numbers, UPS would actually come out on top.

[Sousaswag]

Driving is the way to go... Echoing what has been said already. I've gotten all of my tubas that way. I'm not that old, and I don't mind driving, but I would recommend a driving buddy to come with you. If nothing else so you don't have to be by yourself. Two people can get 2x the distance! For me, the longest I did was about 12 hours. 1pm to 1am, by myself, with minimal stops. It's doable, and very low damage risk provided nobody crashes the car

[bloke]

There are two dynamics at work here:
> habitually checking through my posts to see which one of them can be made to appear to be foolish, mostly because I don’t view quite a few things the same way as the person who does this
> due to that person’s socioeconomic/political views, the belief that top-down management (of most everything) is always superior to organized chaos. It simply isn’t true. Top-down management is always going to only (at best) partially meet everyone’s needs and desires, whereas organized chaos – with individuals each seeking what’s best for them – is often going to work out best for more individuals. These two conflicting theories, though, are what the culture war is all about, isn’t it ? Some people believe that we should all be “managed”, whereas others of us believe that we should be free to set our own goals and find our own solutions.

The last thing I received was a pair of new headlight assemblies for my car… As I’m still allowed to own a car, at least for a while.
They arrived two days ago – both with clips broken off of them. Obviously, they were thrown or dropped. The big cheese of that shipping company - I’m sure - considers a certain percentage of that to be “an acceptable statistic“, whereas end users consider absolutely none of that to be acceptable.

OK… Several dozen tubas driven across the country versus several dozen shipped. It’s OK (since only theoretical) to embrace the false narrative that something is gonna happen to some of those that are driven by individual with cars, but my experience (since I’m actually involved in this enterprise on a nearly daily basis) tells me that far more of them are going to be damaged in shipment. The only problem with individual tubas being driven by individuals to their destinations are the current (top-down manipulated - again: to herd the masses) artificially high fuel prices and the lack of an (would be easy to set up) “organized chaos” network to find people to do it.

[the elephant]

I will say this again. If I want a tuba I will factor in my personally driving 100% of the trip to pick it up. I don't even want the seller to carry it for me. I have had well-intentioned kids meet me for a sale and the horn was damaged in transit because the seller was a thought-devoid kid who completely wasted my time and money by FUBARing the thing on the way to hand it to me. I trust NO ONE once I have decided to buy a horn.

All three of my regular work horns were bought this way, with the exception of the 186, which I only drove about a thousand miles roundtrip to Denton. The seller was way up in Oklahoma and thought that was a good place to meet, and I had known him for years and he used to repair horns, so I trusted him. The Kurath I drove the same thousand miles to the D/FW area and back with the seller not having to drive at all, and the Holton 345 was a 3,750-mile roundtrip drive to the Buffalo, NY area to visit Mark at his home, where I trialed the horn quickly and then hit the road toward home.

For me, it comes down to one hard and fast rule: If I am unwilling/unable to take the time and expense out of *my* end to make the round trip then I DON'T BUY THE TUBA. It is not worth the risk these days.

But y'all keep feeding that American Tourister Gorilla as much as you like. The schadenfreude-adelic value of the horror stories posted here is fantastic.

Words of personal experience, shared with you all by your own TubaForum "Cassandra"

BAHAHAHA!!!

[cthuba]

I really appreciate and AGREE with ya’lls philosophy on shipping but this is the buyer’s decision and not my own, so outside of Norm’s thread from 2009 @theothertubaforum I’m really looking for some advice on the best means to ship this.

[bisontuba]

Driving is Always the best option...but if not possible, try this:

https://www.uship.com/

[hrender]

For the Martin I drove about 1400 miles RT, but I stayed the night, gas was cheaper, and the weather was cooler.

I had good luck with Greyhound when I received the Cerveny last year. Relatively cheap and fast, with no damage incurred. The shipper followed Norm Pearson's packing guide on the old site, which helped a lot IMO.