Log In
Members
Home
Add Reply
Add Topic
I need some advice, please. I rarely ship live ammo but I do it occasionally when selling a gun, since hard to get ammo I already have helps a sale. So, I am familiar with the federal regulations and even UPS’s latest hazardous goods policy.
Before UPS closed their Customer Centers and forbad shippers to drop the boxes off, that’s what I would do. As I write I’m waiting for Big Brown to pick up a 15 pound box containing dies, brass and several boxes of 350 Remington Magnum cartridges, with Limited Quantity labels applied.to the box.
I don’t mind the $15.50 pickup charge because the now closed Customer Service Center was a PITA to get to and in an unsafe neighborhood. But I don’t like having to wait during a noon to 8pm window for the driver. A suggested solution to “leave it on the porch” is unappealing.
So, can someone tell me of their experience with Federal Express? There is a Service Center nearby that FEDEX says will take hazardous goods but they are vague about who can do it.
I need a voice of recent experience.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Fedex and UPs have become very unfriendly to gunowners and dealers in my experience. What most of our engravers guild members , FEGA, are shipping with is the US Postal Service. Priority Mail and if possible Flat Rate boxes. No questions asked. Are they perfect? No. But accommodating and easy.
martin rabeno said
Fedex and UPs have become very unfriendly to gunowners and dealers in my experience. What most of our engravers guild members , FEGA, are shipping with is the US Postal Service. Priority Mail and if possible Flat Rate boxes. No questions asked. Are they perfect? No. But accommodating and easy.
USPS will not ship ammo. Unfortunately, Bill is stuck with UPS or FedEx. I personally have had better luck with UPS, but that might just be my local UPS center.
Bert
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
Bert, my only experience shipping ammo has been UPS because their Service Center treated it as no big deal.
What surprised me was them closing the Center as part of an apparent nationwide plan to eliminate face to face customer contact except through their Stores, Access Points, and driver network.
Of those, only a driver will touch a Limited Quantity package.
I thought perhaps Fedex might still let you drop it off.
Bill
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Zebulon said
Bert, my only experience shipping ammo has been UPS because their Service Center treated it as no big deal.What surprised me was them closing the Center as part of an apparent nationwide plan to eliminate face to face customer contact except through their Stores, Access Points, and driver network.
Of those, only a driver will touch a Limited Quantity package.
I thought perhaps Fedex might still let you drop it off.
Bill
Bill,
Another option (though most likely a bit more costly) is to have your local gun shop ship it for you.
Bert
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
November 7, 2015
Offline
My local UPS store is an easy place to deal with, used it even when I worked for a company with an account. Great for Amazon returns, they even pack it for me.
Mike
TXGunNut said
My local UPS store is an easy place to deal with, used it even when I worked for a company with an account. Great for Amazon returns, they even pack it for me.
Mike
Mike, did your UPS Store ever ship or receive ammunition for you? They would have to be friendly indeed to risk their employment by doing so. The feds don’t care but Big Brown Corporate would have a litter of spotted kitties, followed by a litter of “for cause” pink slips.
UPS carriage terms and policies [available online] say neither UPS Stores nor “Access Points” can handle “Hazardous Goods” or “Dangerous Goods” even in “Limited Quantities.” They make heavy weather of it and remind us that trying to sneak it through actually is a federal crime.
I really like our local UPS store and use them a lot for as much as I can. I like to divert UPS deliveries there and they make boxes and pack things very well. But I’ve learned I can’t divert anything — even R.I.G. or cleaning patches, much less unprimed brass, there from MidwayUSA or MidSouth. It’s apparently baked into the shipping software.
I will say that the UPS guy showed up at my door promptly, about 1pm this afternoon to take the box. I was able to schedule the pickup last night on my laptop, and my MyUPS account let me buy the insured ground shipping label with a nice discount from retail [$38 down from $47], so it’s not really a bad deal once you know how they want to do it. Frankly, I would have paid fifteen bucks NOT to drive to the Monroe Street Customer Center, an iffy neighborhood. And it was at least an hour, round trip.
UPS won’t ship firearms unless you sign a contract with them and have a federal license, although it can be a C&R, and you have to let them pick it up. Handguns have to ship Next Day Air Saver or better but long guns can go ground. I’ve always shipped long guns Priority Mail because my P.O. is only minutes away. Had to drive to Monroe Street to ship a handgun. It might be worth a try.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 7, 2015
Offline
Bill-
I haven’t shipped ammo via UPS for quite some time. I know they have been a bit touchy on this subject for several years so haven’t had the occasion to look into doing so. I used to ship sample cast bullets to other casters via USPS but as many postal clerks confuse bullets with loaded ammunition I would simply certify they were not hazardous and leave it at that.
I don’t understand why UPS will allow drivers to pick up shipments they will not accept at their facilities but I suppose it doesn’t have to make sense in today’s world as long as we follow their rules.
Mike
TXGunNut said
Bill-I haven’t shipped ammo via UPS for quite some time. I know they have been a bit touchy on this subject for several years so haven’t had the occasion to look into doing so. I used to ship sample cast bullets to other casters via USPS but as many postal clerks confuse bullets with loaded ammunition I would simply certify they were not hazardous and leave it at that.
I don’t understand why UPS will allow drivers to pick up shipments they will not accept at their facilities but I suppose it doesn’t have to make sense in today’s world as long as we follow their rules.
Mike
I also haven’t shipped ammunition in a very long time. I can’t remember how many years but it’s been many. Not that I don’t have ammunition I could stand to get rid of – I just don’t want to go through the hassle and effort. Last time I shipped ammunition it was at the UPS hub. It was a bit of a drive and a pain to get to. Add in the packing and other effort and whatever I sold just didn’t seem to come close to covering my time and aggravation. I also found that I never knew what kind of aggravation I would run into. I recall a debate with a UPS counter-person. I think I was shipping some .300 Savage ammo. He asked, “what caliber are you shipping.” I said, “three-hundred” and he responded – “I can’t ship it then, I can’t ship anything over fifty caliber.” I did my best to educate him on the difference between .308 diameter and .500 diameter. He shipped it, but still cast a dubious eye on me.
For me, the bottom line is I’m in this hobby for enjoyment. I think about Bill’s comment above. When he was driving to his UPS hub, it was a distance to drive and in a bad part of town on top of that. That doesn’t sound like enjoyment to me. Bert had the idea of using a local gun store to ship it. That might be an option, but as he mentions, you’ll likely pay to have them do it. That leads me further, to ponder, “is it really worth it?”
I think it is also worth mentioning there’s plenty of rules and regulations as to where you can ship ammunition. Just look at Midway or others who outline all the places they can’t ship to. Sometimes, buyers aren’t aware of this. So… you can make a deal with a buyer, then you research his location and discover it’s against the law/rules. The buyer can be disappointed, unhappy, tell you to, “ship it anyway – just don’t say what it is.” If I’m involved in a conversation like that – I am really not having fun 
I’m back to my bottom line: aggravation does not equal fun!
Edit: from what I hear, shipping has also become very expensive.
November 7, 2015
Offline
Steve-
Yes, shipping costs have risen dramatically due to similar increases in fuel, labor and fleet costs. I suspect they’re self-insured but that comes at a significant cost as well. Haz-mat is a huge problem in the shipping business and this is apparently how UPS addresses it. Shipping is indeed expensive and it affects the price consumers pay for almost everything they buy.
Funny how UPS hubs seem to be located in rough areas. In my LE days I had a few adventures within a few blocks of the hub for this area.
Mike
I’ve shipped several boxes of ammo as accessories to the slow liquidation of my gun collection, both before and after the Biden administration’s war on guns.
Invariably, the ammo helped sell the gun because the caliber was obsolete. Usually the shipment was a 12×12×8 box with a set of dies, some boxed factory rounds, and new and once-fired brass.
Before Biden, the only trouble was driving to the Monroe Street Customer Service Center. My laser printer made a few ORM-D labels to keep handy. I discovered I could get a discount by buying the label online via my free UPS “MyUPS” app. Buyer paid the freight charges, so machs nichts.
As I’ve just learned, under the new deal, the Buyer has to pay $15.15 more for shipping, to cover the pickup charge, and I don’t have to drive to Monroe Street, which saves me about 90 minutes and gas, unless there’s a rush hour on.
In my experience, when somebody gets to buy one of my nice, carefully preserved bunduki and the ammo to shoot it, he doesn’t quarrel about shipping charges – as long as he is confident his stuff is well packed, adequately insured, and that you are not trying to make money on the shipping charges.
ALL IN ALL, I THINK I LIKE THE NEW DEAL BETTER.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 7, 2015
Offline
Steve-
Yes, shipping costs have risen dramatically due to similar increases in fuel, labor and fleet costs. I suspect they’re self-insured but that comes at a significant cost as well. Haz-mat is a huge problem in the shipping business and this is apparently how UPS addresses it. Shipping is indeed expensive and it affects the price consumers pay for almost everything they buy.
Funny how UPS hubs seem to be located in rough areas. In my LE days I had a few adventures within a few blocks of the hub for this area.
Mike
Mike, I think the reason for the location of the Customer Service Centers is they’ve always been co-located with some kind of UPS collection/distribution hub, where there’s a lot of truck movement going in and out, including the big 18 wheel freighters. So, zoning and restrictive land use covenants pretty much control where they can be. Those places are usually not of the beau monde.
But I have been told by a person of no less authority and corporate knowledge than JASON, of the hazardous,/dangerous goods department, that UPS has closed or is about to close ALL of its Customer Service Centers. So any goods you can’t drop off at an Access Point or UPS Store — not just guns and ammo — has to be picked up.
I think the real reason for eliminating the Centers is cutting labor costs because of UPS abandoning its deal with Amazon.They had to do it because Amazon was squeezing them while developing its own delivery network. UPS is in a frenzy to streamline their operation to save money while replacing lost business.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Zebulon said
I’ve shipped several boxes of ammo as accessories to the slow liquidation of my gun collection, both before and after the Biden administration’s war on guns.Invariably, the ammo helped sell the gun because the caliber was obsolete. Usually the shipment was a 12×12×8 box with a set of dies, some boxed factory rounds, and new and once-fired brass.
Before Biden, the only trouble was driving to the Monroe Street Customer Service Center. My laser printer made a few ORM-D labels to keep handy. I discovered I could get a discount by buying the label online via my free UPS “MyUPS” app. Buyer paid the freight charges, so machs nichts.
As I’ve just learned, under the new deal, the Buyer has to pay $15.15 more for shipping, to cover the pickup charge, and I don’t have to drive to Monroe Street, which saves me about 90 minutes and gas, unless there’s a rush hour on.
In my experience, when somebody gets to buy one of my nice, carefully preserved bunduki and the ammo to shoot it, he doesn’t quarrel about shipping charges – as long as he is confident his stuff is well packed, adequately insured, and that you are not trying to make money on the shipping charges.
ALL IN ALL, I THINK I LIKE THE NEW DEAL BETTER.
Bill –
Yes, I had caught that your recent ammo shipment need was attached to a larger package that included a rifle. That does make it more worthwhile to take the task on. I was mainly referring to those scenarios where you are selling just the ammo. I sometimes see a single box of ammo advertised and that makes me wonder if it’s worth it. It wouldn’t be for me. However, different guys have different set-ups. If you have a UPS account and UPS comes to you to pick it up, and the buyer is content to pay the total shipping costs, it would be more tolerable. A fly in the ointment for me would be if there is a many hour window of time I have to wait around. I also view things from the perspective of working full-time (and I don’t work from home).
2 Guest(s)
