When I sent my Taylor race ribcage gearbox to Doug bruce I was literally shipping 24K gold to him, they cost like close to $6K new, I wnet and bought the size box I needed and wnet and got some 1'x wood from home depot and built a frame for it that bolt the the gearbox to the frame and the frame was built to fit the box like a glove. A ribcage weight slightly un 60 pounds, and the box i sent it in wasn't considered oversized it went UPS groud via my comercial account (which any of you can open one with UPS) for less than $40 from SC to Indy area.
UPS has two type of accounts, one where you pay for daily pick up for frequent shipping, that plan cost me like $16.00 a week service charges, but even thogh I ship more than most I don't ship everyday, the service charges were killing me for no more shipping than I do ( about 10 parcels a month ) then I found thy had a second plan, no weekly service fees, and a slightly higher shipping rate, when I say slightly, I enan just that, more like $1 more on a given fee, now you have to shedul a pickup which cost like $5, but i don't even do that, i know my local UPS guys and they still pick up my stuff, and often times I drop off at a lcoa Staples office supply, UPS store, thay all have to by contract accept your pre paid shipment free of cost. This paln had work out great for me. The big problem with the UPS store, are thy are not owned by UPS but private owners who greatly mark up UPS rates, so I think UPS often gets a bad wrap via UPS store for high rate, because people don't know how to work the system. I often get people wanting me to send stuff USPS because they think it's cheaper than UPS, but for me USPS vs UPS account is no contest, USPS is way higher, and they are not very good to say the least.
It cost a tick over $9 to send Tony his carbs the other day,, at the post office it would have benn closer to $15.
I also have a Fed EX acount, but in my area, my UPS guy is way better than my FedEx guy.
Oh, here's a another little shipping tip for you all, when you dealing with a honst little guy, like me, don't ask me to quote your shipping. When someoen ask me to quote thier shipping before charging thier card, I run the quote program on UPS and then use the quote price and make out the invoice, charge the card, then go back and get out of the quote program go to the create a shipment program, and run the shipping invoice and it's always cheaper than the quote, a little trust will save you a couple of buck, I mark my shipping up $1 over actual cost to pay for tape and bubble wrap, and recycle my boxes and packing material to save on shipping cost for you and me.
OK after this I will stop. A guy sent me a MGB cranksahft to work on. I guess he had been ripped off on shipping in the past, so he had very stern shipping instructions. he knew exactly what the crank work was going to cost, so he sent that amount plus 35 bucks to cover the return shipping cost. he had used USPS, and told me he absolutely refused to pay high UPS shippng cost, and the post office had shipped the crank to me for $35.00, so that's what he included for the return shipping. He told me, ship it however you want, but I'm not paying any extra than the $35, and if you can do it cheaper, which I doubt, then keep the overage for a tip, and snickered. I sent the crank back to him via UPS ground, I got a $18 tip on that deal