How much are you currently paying for coast-to-coast ground service (per case or per bottle)? I was quoted a sum that seemed extremely high, but maybe I am just out of step
I just ran quotes from Sonoma to DC for 40 pounds for both UPS and FedEx. It’s $95-$100 per box for ground.
Holy crap, for ground??
Yup. Plus I forgot the signature required so add $5 to the above.
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had to pay just over $100 per case recently for a 3rd party shipping solution.
Garagiste just charged me $41.75 per case for shipment from WA to CT. I recently went on UPS or FedEx to just quote an approximate price for a wine case from CA to CT and thought it came out somewhere in the $45-50 range, but not sure that’s totally reliable?
Shipping has gone up a touch, but I think some retailers either aren’t getting volume shipping discounts, or they are passing along all costs to the customer. I just had a quote of $35 for two bottles to be shipped WITHIN New York State. That’s absurd.
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In Oct I shipped 6 bottles from CA > NJ ground for $47 via Fedex. Would have been $98 for overnight. This is through a 3rd party shipping company that can legally ship wine. So they provide me with a Fedex Label + the alcohol sticker warning for the box and I can drop it off at any Fedex Store (the old Kinkos) or a Fedex shipping station and its done legally.
I have no idea what the basic UPS or Fedex costs are. The prices from stores and wineries vary widely. I would say an average for a case for ground from the west coast to DC is around $50, more or less, and from another east coast city is $30-40. I really doubt any of them are taking a loss.
The basic charge to ship a case to the East Coast from CA, including shipping materials, is well over $70 now, and will probably continue to rise. Any winery that is charging less than that has either struck some ‘magical deal’ or, most likely, is subsidizing the costs themselves, as I do. So when those wineries are offering you heavily discounted or free shipping, it is a BIG deal, especially if their wines are ‘value priced’ and not >$80 per . . .
Cheers
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What is up with all this third party shipping? I honestly have not ordered much wine from the west coast in the last 3 years but why is FedEx not directly shipping?
WTSO on the east coast uses FedEx direct shipping to my local FedEx Office.
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Private sales. In this case I purchased 6 bottles from someone here on the Commerce Corner. So needed to provide a label. I also have a friend in TX and we split some cases so sometimes we send stuff to him from CA, he breaks it up, and sends me the rest.
I am talking more about the wine shops in California. Benchmark most notably with high costs of shipping and using third party shipping.
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States changing laws and/or increasing enforcement of laws targeted at out-of-state shippers, especially retailers.
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Shippers, especially small wineries, that don’t want to/can’t deal with all the logistics of permitting/recordkeeping/etc. for every different state scheme so pay a 3PS to do it for them.
Best I can tell from the recipient side, anyway.
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I just paid $70 from CA to FL. I had a whole bunch of cases so that total shipping charge was over $1K. I will back up Larry, that is the going rate. One of my companies is based in MO. They ship thousands of packages per day, so they get a good rate from UPS. I just had them ship something to someone in OR and the shipping charge was $91. Two years ago that charge would have been $40-$50.
I’ve found UPS to be more expensive than FedEx by quite a bit. I think one of the problems with this thread and entire conversation is some people are quoting business prices for shipping with an alcohol label, signature required, including packaging and labor and others are talking standard account prices for just the label. I can ship a case of wine across the country for $30, but that’s not fair to compare to a retailer. A box will cost about $10 and labor and then signature and then maybe an alcohol surcharge, etc.
I also had the idea that larger businesses can negotiate significantly better rates than a small shop with lower volume…someone like Winex can send a case for far less than a one-man operation can. Also, I was able to use the shipping department at the large tech companies I’ve worked for to send packages at their cost as a perk (not wine, they x-rayed the outgoing boxes!) at a small fraction of what it would cost me as an individual.
Shipping other things instead of wine is much much cheaper . . .
Cheers
Unless it’s $20,000 (each) violas, which I have done. i expect the whole 3rd party shipper thing completely changes the calculation for wine.
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Thanks to everyone for your replies. Seems as thought the price I was quoted was more reasonable than I thought.