There are many ways that you can make your shipping charges more cost-effective. An example would be, when you order our Colt guitars; if you are going to order three Colts it would be cost effective to order four because your shipping amount will stay the same because it ships in the same size box. That holds true for all of the guitars in our Indiana line. We have changed our box quantity to conform to the dimensional weight changes as they have changed yearly.

 

There are other ways to save on shipping if you are only going to order one Indiana guitar... If you only need one guitar, order tuners, small accessory items, or even a case/gig bag that we can ship along with that guitar to make it more cost effective.

 

Big Order? Let’s go freight! Orders that are big enough might qualify as a “freight shipment” and can be put on a pallet, shrink wrapped, and shipped via Common Carrier. Whoever offers us the least amount of freight charges for your shipment will be the forwarder we will use. The advantage of ordering BIG is the fact that you can bypass the dimensional charges by UPS, Fed Ex, and other carriers’. In most cases it is much cheaper to go on a pallet then to go UPS with bigger orders due to dimensional weight.

 

For our industry, dimensional weight is a big factor! A guitar that only weighs 10 Lbs, by UPS standard of packing, would go into our “single guitar” box, which is 42 Lbs. dimensional weight. YIKES! The warehouse employee’s here at SHS have been trained to cut down a box in any case that you are able to. This allows you to save on dimensional charges. In doing so, we must also make sure that the product is properly packaged so it will make it safely to its destination.

 

Our single guitar, double guitar, mandolin, ukulele, and banjo boxes all have been sent to a UPS test site for evaluation of Damage Resistance. UPS engineers carried out compression, drop, vibration and shock tests to simulate the stresses on packages moving through the supply chain and to identify packaging weaknesses. To ensure fewer damages, SHS International tested all the boxes listed above and they have been approved by the UPS engineers for our specific products.

 

One last tip is to confirm with your UPS driver that your location is a business and is not classified as a residential address. The charges for residential, COD, and all other fee’s continue to rise, so saving on freight is a plus. Also, it might not be a bad idea to try to get a UPS shipper number. You would get your own discounted rate from UPS that we could use when shipping you your products.