How To Ship Heavy Speakers With Insurance?


The seller of a pair of B&W N802 speakers and I are having the most difficult time finding a shipper for his set of N802's to me. It is from Georgia to Colorado.

We cannot ship via regular Fedex or UPS as each speaker in its box is around 195lbs. Fedex and UPS limit their shipments to 150lbs per parcel.

When you move up to their freight services they only insure their packages for a vlaue of $0.10/pound, meaning if you ship 195lb speakers, you could get a maximum payout of $19.50 if something goes wrong. As we know these speakers are worth much more than that.

Just wondering what people have used in the past to ship and insure very heavy speakers?

Thanks,

Josh
beatboy77
Contact a company called Service by Air.

They are excellent to work with and reasonably priced. Most importantly they take good care of your package and will insure for value of item.
I am about to ship a pair of Verity Audio Parsifals very reasonably priced and fully insured with a company called pilot air. They have distribution centers in Atlanta and Denver. You may look into them.

I've used Pilot Air a couple of times and have had no problems.

I also like the idea of palletting the freight too AND banding it to the pallatte. A good std sized oak 4 way, 40W x 48L. A sheet of 1/4 solid material between them and the skid will help too.

Good luck.
Try freightcenter.com

http://www.freightcenter.com/

The website provides a comparison of various freight carriers and you can then choose the least expensive one. I ended up using R&L Carriers. I used them and all went well from the point of shipping to destination. Of course you will have to put the speakers on a pallet. I happened to have the original pallet my speakers arrived on. You can get the straps to securely strap the speakers to the pallet at places like Home Depot or Loews. The trucks picking up and delivering the speakers will both need to have a liftgate. I did the work of securing the speakers to the pallet in my garage. The truck driver pulled his pallet hand truck into the garage to slide it into the pallet, raised the pallet, and rolled the speakers down the driveway to the truck on the street. Do some research on the net and get the correct Class code for speakers which is important information that you will need when doing the online forms for freightcenter.com. Insure the speakers accordingly. Communicate well with the buyer.
Called Pilot Air and BAX and both said they do not ship Personal or Residential items, only business accounts are accepted.

Any other companies to try?

Thanks,

Josh
I second freightcenter.com. I shipped a 550lb pair of speakers strapped to a pallet from Miami to Texas (hope I never have to do that again). Total cost was $450 and they picked up from my house. The carrier was R&L.
Pilot Air does personal and has shipped 4 sets of speakers for me. I drop them off at the closest warehouse however.
I've mentioned this in another thread -- I had good luck going through uship.com -- personalized shipping at very reasonable cost since shippers are bidding on the job. Worked very well for me and price was hundreds lower than I could/would have paid.
We ended up going with Craters & Freighters. They gave a very reasonable price and even placed everything on the pallet.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

~Josh

Pilot Air merely brokers freight or cargo. Initially I was told something similar to the non private sector item previously listed here…. But if you can get the product to their nearest depot (usually near the Airport) they’ll ship it for you. Reasonably. I recall them also having a $250 deductible on declared value.

Do let us know how things turned out and how consumer friendly they are… p/u, packing, delivery, insurance, etc.

It never ever hurts to have alternatives for shipping as some sort of carrier is involved in nearly every deal here.
I also highly recommend Pilot. I shipped 400 lbs of speakers from Virginia to Phoenix and it cost me only 390.00 including insurance.

Shakey
Lot of good things about pilot and I have them shipping my speakers coast to coast as we speakers. However, they did mention they do NOT insure used speakers, so all riks is yours.
sometimes the office personael at the shipping locale isn't always up to snuff on ALL the in's and out's of liabilities and such.... so to make sure I'd advise people to check with the corporate offices first hand.

If you want to find out for sure then call Pilot Corporate office - 610 891 8100 ..... if the # hasn't changed.
I had Pilot insure all 4 of the speakers I shipped by showing them the model number, price new and taking pictures of my speakers. It took a little selling but I got it done!