Shipping expensive speakers

A good friend of mine unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack, and now I'm getting his home theater speakers. They're tower speakers, but not outrageously tall or heavy (1.2m tall, 32kg each), plus a center channel and a big subwoofer.

I'm trying to understand how to get them from Seattle to Houston. So far as I can tell, the two main choices are going to a pack-and-ship store, which sends them via UPS or FedEx, or calling up a freight shipping service who does everything end-to-end, probably including custom boxes, and everything presumably goes on a shipping palette and is somehow routed through the shipping network

I've searched the usual suspects, like AVSforum, but there's not a whole lot about this sort of thing out there.

Thoughts?

I have to imaging speakers bang themselves around when played, so should be resilient to shipping. What's your concern?

So far as I can tell, the speakers are under UPS's maximum shipping weight (68kg), but heavy enough that they match up with UPS "special guidelines" for heavy packages (>31.5kg), which requires more sophisticated packaging, like a double-thickness cardboard box.

Conversely, I could call a commercial freight shipper and probably end up spending a lot more money, but then maybe they would do a whole shipping pallet, shrinkwrap and straps and such, which might maybe do better in a cross-country adventure?

I used Greyhound for oddball oversized shipping several times. They just ended that service, though. Trailways seems to offer a similar one.

When I worked with LTL carriers in my retail days, they didn't require pallets or shrinkwrapping - just clearly labeled boxes and "x of (total)" boxes on each label. (It's been ages though.)

I've heard about (but never tried) some movers that will sell extra space on a van. Seems Seattle to Houston might be a fairly common move.

Good luck!

Interesting. I know nothing about the LTL universe. Are there brokers that I'd contact who would look for that extra space?

Google works. "LTL carriers".

Eg. https://yrc.com/

This is just a quick comment to say I once shipped a Subaru WRX 5-speed transmission through UPS from New York to Rhode Island. It was not doubled-boxed, though I used copious amounts of expanding foam. It was accepted and delivered with no issues.


We routinely ship loose cartons with YRC, ODFL, R+L, and other LTL carriers. These are items that are outside the dimensions UPS or FedEx accepts. We have contracts with these carriers that take something like 80% off their published rates. But, services do exist that also have access to these rates, add a markup, and then sell to you. One such service I'm familiar with is freightquote.com. I'm sure there are plenty others.

This is fantastic, gives me a place to start investigating. I'll call them up and see what they have to say.

Don't you have a service like Shiply in the US?

https://www.shiply.com/

Actually, we have a reality show called "Shipping Wars" which seems to follow these gig-worker oddball shipping guys. That's a good point, but I am not aware of what sites these guys use to bid on jobs. Nothing is jumping out on Google, but I'm probably using the wrong search terms. I'm not likely to watch the show to do more research...

EDIT: Wikipedia says the reality show takes bids from uShip.com in the first 8 seasons.