Cost of shipping from the USA

I have built a few MV Marshalls and actually really like the 2004 style overdrive. But at the moment I'm using a slightly modified 50W '68 style plexi circuit in 1x12 combo and loving it. I have a couple of pedals which really work for dirt - both are fairly heavily modified versions of other things. And I recently sold my 1x12 JTM45 combo to a friend who keeps raving to me about it! The key for me has been building the cabinet out of solid pine similar to a Fender tweed cab. To me it sounds so much better than the heavy, stiff baltic ply cabs that Marshall use. The Marshall cabs squash the dynamics and make the amp more directional. Solid pine with lightweight baffles just spread the sound everywhere. You get more low end too. So my Marshalls sound like the tightest, toughest tweed amps ever. :) Much lighter to carry too!

I love building this stuff.
 
Im'm selling stuff on Ebay and I cringe when it gets routed through St.Rose instead of New Orleans. St. Rose is where packages go to die. I am waiting on a pedal routed through there and it has according to tracking has left and returned there twice.
 
How do they make shipping small packages from China to the US so inexpensive? Many small eBay purchases only charge $3 for slow shipping from China. I would be surprised if China is doing significant subsidization on zillions of packages. Is there some scheme where they first bulk ship from China to a US location, and then sort the packages and hand them off to an US shipper via local rates? (E.g., USPS, UPS, etc.). For China, the bulk shipping is surely by boat, tagging along with tons of other stuff coming from China to the US. But I have the same question for Tayda, where 2-day shipping from Thailand is well below typical international shipping cost, but here the shipping has to be by air.

It makes me wonder why US small shippers don't set up an equivalent scheme to expand access to non-US customers. This could/should be replicated by eBay, Etsy, etc.

Does anyone know the answer?
 
To me in Australia Tayda takes around 2-3 days via DHL. It's extremely reasonably priced - around $8.00 usually for a small package. We're not that close to Thailand. The shipping seems to get cheaper as you order more so I have assumed that Tayda subsidise shipping themselves, but I don't really know.

When I have bought Ge transistors from Russia (before the whole Ukraine thing) shipping was ridiculously cheap. Not super fast, but about the same as I would pay to get a letter across town via Australia Post. Bulgaria much the same. I have heard that China does indeed subsidise the post office. I guess it's not an individual case-by-case thing but just an overall "we take care of it" style business. It's good for China's businesses if shipping is cheap. A lot of governments around the world don't expect their services to necessarily make a profit - they are services after all. If they can help pay for cost of living stuff they will.
 
darwin999 said:
How do they make shipping small packages from China to the US so inexpensive? Many small eBay purchases only charge $3 for slow shipping from China. I would be surprised if China is doing significant subsidization on zillions of packages. Is there some scheme where they first bulk ship from China to a US location, and then sort the packages and hand them off to an US shipper via local rates? (E.g., USPS, UPS, etc.). For China, the bulk shipping is surely by boat, tagging along with tons of other stuff coming from China to the US. But I have the same question for Tayda, where 2-day shipping from Thailand is well below typical international shipping cost, but here the shipping has to be by air.

It makes me wonder why US small shippers don't set up an equivalent scheme to expand access to non-US customers. This could/should be replicated by eBay, Etsy, etc.

Does anyone know the answer?
Click to expand...
The United States is not classified as a developing nation by the United Nations and China is. International shipping is controlled by the Universal Postal Union which is part of UN.

Universal Postal Union - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

"the UPU adopted a "threshold" system in 1991 that set separate letter and periodical rates for countries which receive at least 150 tonnes of mail annually.[19] The 1999 Postal Congress established "country-specific" terminal dues for industrialized countries, offering a lower rate to developing countries."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top