Shipping Explained: Ocean, Air, and Your Front Door

The Four Factors

There are 4 factors to consider when you are thinking about shipping. 2 involve how your order is packaged and 2 involve the speed of your delivery.

When production is complete, our vendors package everything up based on your shipping method. That means it gets prepared in one of two ways.

Small Package or Pallet

Small package means your books or games are sent in individual boxes and arrive at your door on a normal delivery truck.

These boxes are well packaged with corner protectors and bubble wrap to make sure they survive the long voyage in the best shape possible. Here is what the inner packaging looks like.

BUT, we also have a great video of this process here.

This is the most common shipping method when your total weight comes in below certain measures. Usually that means your total package count is below 50 boxes.

When your order runs over 50 boxes, you might be getting your whole shipment on a pallet. Pallet shipping is cheaper for large, heavy shipments than sending individual boxes.

These shipments are not packaged with as much interior protection in each box, but all the boxes are wrapped together and protected by the wooden pallet. Because they travel bundled into one large self-contained unit, they experience far less jostling and wear and tear than individual small packages do.

Ocean or Air

There are 2 options of shipping speed as well.

Ocean shipping is where the real value of overseas printing takes place. The method is slow, but it’s very cheap for large volumes. A large pallet of books can cost as little as a couple of hundred dollars to ship from China to the west coast of the United States. That might be the same cost as trucking a pallet of goods across town in the US.

If you don’t have time for that, expedited shipping is your best option. It takes the six week ocean time and knocks it down to just 1 week. But you pay for it!

Here is the same book quoted both ways. Click on the options to see the trade-off on cost vs time.

You Don’t Have to Fly All of Them

Because air freight is so expensive, it’s common for our customers to expedite only a small portion of their order and save their money by shipping the bulk of it on the ocean. Like how I did on my first book order.

You can mix and match the styles of shipping all you want to suit your budget and the conditions of your plans. You can also ship to multiple locations, and send parts of the expedited shipment or the ocean shipment to those locations.

Just bear in mind that the more adjustments you make here, by splitting your shipment into different locations or by speed, the more you’ll spend on shipping.

Why We Can’t Promise You an Exact Date

When shipping, you should plan for the following timeframes.

Ocean shipping doesn’t offer definitive delivery schedules, so we’ll always quote you approximations. Many factors affect the schedule of an ocean bound shipment, including import delays, customs inspections and delays from weather events. Just FYI.

People experienced in ordering custom made goods from overseas know to leave plenty of fat on their schedule to account for the unexpected. Giving yourself no wiggle room almost invites the unexpected to waltz through the door.

You know those pictures of giant ocean liners overflowing with shipping containers? Like this?

Yep, your project will be on one of those ships. Known for their capacity more than their speed, these ships move at the pace of their conditions, and that is the reason we cannot give you an exact delivery schedule.

Even after the shipment arrives at the port, there is a whole layer of processing that has to happen. Many of those steps are beyond our control, and beyond the control of the shipping companies too. The sheer volume of shipments passing through those ports means processing happens at its own pace. Another reason it’s always wise to account for extra time wherever you can.

Into the Ground System

But we’re not quite done yet! Even after your shipment has arrived at the port, been processed and cleared customs, it still has to be transferred into the ground shipping system.

Rarely will a shipment from overseas be handled by the same logistics company the whole way. Companies tend to focus either on the international movement of goods, or on moving those goods within the United States.

At this point your goods get managed in one of two ways.

If they are small package. Your boxes get labeled for final destination and put on a truck for delivery to your door. This is usually a UPS shipment, and when those boxes are loaded up you’ll get a notification from us alerting you to their imminent arrival!

If they are on a pallet. Your pallet gets transferred to a trucking company that labels it and processes it for delivery. That includes moving it to a local distribution center where the final mile delivery can take place. Once the trucking company has the goods, they will reach out to you by phone to arrange the delivery. This takes more coordination than a small package delivery, because a pallet is harder to deliver.

Dock or Driveway

When accepting a pallet delivery, it’s critical that you are prepared for its bulk!

The trucking company will deliver your pallets either on a standard truck and cab, or on a truck with a liftgate. The liftgate lowers the goods to ground level when there is no delivery dock available. Delivery docks are usually built so the dock sits at the height of the truck’s cargo gate.

Most deliveries to businesses have a large dock at freight height, but if you are planning on this method, research it in advance. Find out whether the dock you are dealing with is standard height. If it’s not, you might be stuck with a redelivery and a fee, or you might find yourself inside the truck breaking down pallets so you can offload the boxes by hand. That sucks. Don’t recommend.

Back when I received my pallet of books, they arrived on a liftgate truck. The company called and arranged a time for me to be there, since they cannot deliver a pallet without some sort of assistance. A UPS driver might be able to drop off your boxes and go on his merry way, but a pallet shipment can’t just be left.

If it is being delivered to a business that can accept a shipment on a loading dock, the trucker needs to know someone will be at the dock to help with the unloading. That means having a pallet jack and somewhere to put the pallet.

For me, I was just a guy. Those books were going into the garage off the alley. That gave me time to unpack the pallet and break it down enough to haul the boxes into the house for storage.

If you are accepting that delivery in the alley like I did, make sure you can get it out of the way quickly enough not to block traffic. These pallets are large, and the trucking company will not leave one somewhere that causes a traffic jam.

They will arrive with a pallet jack and help you get the shipment to its final spot, but they will not help you move the goods inside. Inside delivery can be arranged, but it has to be quoted and communicated well before the delivery day. Once the trucking company has the pallet in place, it’s your responsibility. Congratulations!

Let Us Handle the Headaches

Sure there is a lot more to the whole logistics process of moving goods over the ocean and to your front door, but these are the basics and enough info for the process.

You might be tempted to try and manage the shipping process yourself because you hear that you can save money by hiring out a logistics company directly. While it’s true that you can do that, and we can give you a quote for that style of delivery (there are fees for preparing the paperwork and arranging to deliver the goods to your freight partner), we don’t recommend it.

Logistics is a large industry that covers the globe and has its own vocabulary that isn’t used anywhere else. You can quickly find yourself way over your head on terms and conditions you never expected to deal with, and delivery arrangements you haven’t considered.

Take advantage of the knowledge that your printing company and logistics partners have and consider your time and peace of mind as having a real cost. We move goods every day and know what to do, so let us handle the headaches. After all, you have better things to do, like working on the next project!