I just got ahold of a Shopsmith Mark V on eBay and I’m totally geeked. One problem: getting it to Grand Junction, CO from northern California. It weighs 235 pounds and is 60L x 27W x 30H.
When I go to Shopsmith’s site and try to purchase a new one, it says freight will cost $250 and that’s just fine with me. So how do they do it so cheaply?
What’s the Straight Dope on freight? What are my $200-ish options?
Thanks in advance.
How do they do it cheaply? Volume, primarily. They probably have one truck at their dock each week picking up the machines in a quick, well-coordinated loading, rather than daily onsey-twosey pickups, so they’re occupying a driver and truck for less time.
There’s also a chance that some of the machine’s purchase price reflects a bit of “discounted shipping” - their real shipping cost might be $300, but the other $50 comes out of the $3,000+ the machine sells for.
You’ll pay more than they do because you’re (probably) having the truck pick the thing up at someone’s garage, so there will be a good bit of time taken to get the thing on the truck.
On your own, you could rent a minivan for about $400 plus the roughly 2,000 miles worth of gas to get to Petaluma and back, plus a couple nights at motels.
Seller had a lifestyle change? What? They switched from woodworking to crochet? 
I’ve never done it myself, but I notice a lot of furniture sold on EBay is shipped by Greyhound. So you might inquire with them.
Its only tangentially related to the OP, but I just had to mention that I once shipped a 500 pound crate, measuring 7’ x 6’ x 4’ via FedEx overnight, from Maryland to Taiwan. Now THAT was expensive.
There are several sites that give truck line shipping quotes, so if you haven’t already you might try some of them. You’ll need to know the freight class, but you might be able to call the manufacturer and get it.
An associate only ships by truck line maybe twice a month, yet gets about a 50% discount off the “rack rate” for shipping, so it seems discounts are fairly easy to get (just a guess).
I used to move alot of heavy stuff (pallets of hardcover books). That sounds about right, many LTL freight carriers like Yellow Freight or CWX will do this type of pickup/delivery but they usually charge extra because of the extra PITA factor sending out a trailer with a liftgate/pallet jack and unloading that way rather than just rolling it onto a proper loading dock area. $250 does not seem too far off the mark.
Just call your local UPS Store. We handled items like that (and much bigger) fairly often. You can get a quote over the phone. I really can’t remember prices from those days when but they started at about $200 for a matchbox. That was the minimum rate to go “logistics”. IS it crated?, fragile, palletted? Be ready to answer that kind of questions when calling around. IME, crating was often more expensive than the freight charges! Be prepared.
Sorry, hit a hot spell and fields need tending.
Total comes to $215.
Apparently the guy won’t be arsed to put this thing on a pallet so my freighter (UPS, thanks especially Sapo – if it works out I’ll send you a hand-turned candlestick or something) can snatch it up on his doorstep. We appear to be at an impasse.
Anyway, I appreciate the help. I suppose I can always go back to hacking away at shit with my Sawz-All. The lathe is the thing I’d miss the most. 
If you use a “The UPS Store”, instead of UPS directly, they might handle the whole thing for you, pick up, pallet, freight and the rest. Give that a try.
There is a company called Forward Air, that deals with such items. I know they ship uncrated motorcycles for example, which would be about the same bulk, and significantly heavier than a shopsmith.