Recommended Carrier for Speaker Shipments

I recently used Roadway to ship two Quads from Seattle to a friend in Cleveland. Since I expect that shippers will attempt to drop anything just to test the laws of gravity, I custom built two wooden crates complete with foam padding. The crates are reusable, too. I think I spent about $400 on wood, special packing foam, screws, and stencils. The stencils were used to spray paint “this side up” and “fragile” all over the crates. It took me 18 hours to build the crates. Anyone who is an “expert” carpenter can probably do the same job in half the time. I digress. My friend claims that the speakers arrived with no damage (not even to the crates). Roadway ships via truck and the truck driver who picked up the crates was very careful (at least while I was watching). The cost to ship was another $300. Piece of mind comes with a high premium these days.

Caveat emptor: Roadway completely screwed up billing and over billed us. Three times.

--Paul

I've had two different pairs of Avalon speakers shipped from California and Denver to South Carolina and chose AIT(based outside Denver I think) because they were the chosen carrier of Avalon to ship their speakers. I had bought one pair from a Audiogon member who had no shipping crates and arranged for Avalon to ship the crates via AIT to the seller and then ship the speakers to me. They did a great job and their charges were fair and their service was exceptional. If you have the original shipping cartons and all the packing material and they are in good condition and sturdy, then there should be no problem.

I have good fortune with BAX but as someone said they can all mess up. The most important thing to me is to get them on a pallet and have them shrink wrapped and delivered that way to your door - this way you know they did what you asked.

If they do this, the only way is to run a fork lift into them and that is a lot less likely than dropping, crushing, etc.

The perfect way would be to do the above but have a custom crate/box made that includes additonal packing that the speaker boxes/crates fit into. Then this is put on pallet and shrink wrapped. Your chances for damage have almost been made void.

Last, as the story with BAX above shows, look them over really really well BEFORE signing. You have only one chance to do this so don't let the shipper push you and don't be too anxious. Find a problem BEFORE signing and you will save yourself tons of pain.

Good luck.
Charles

first build or purchase wood crates like the 4 I have listed here for sale under Genesis speakers. Second don't call UPS. Third Call Crater and Freighter if you don't perform first step they will crate your speakers for about $200 each. They can ship them for reasonable fees also.

When I called Bax about shipping my speakers I was told that they will only ship company to company and will not take anything from an individual. Call them first to make sure you can ship with them, if you decide to go that way.