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so what are we all doing for shipping boxes, tape, postage and so on?

I find and reuse old boxes and I found that dollar general's pro heavy duty packaging is not to bad for the price but I been wanting to find something cheaper. As for postage I use pirate ship.

Anyway What are you guys all using and were are you getting your shipping supplies ?

Some stuff I do.

Usps boxes are free. Use them to ship in or use as dividing boxes within a larger box.

Gaylords(/skids/pallets). See if a local business gets them with produce (watermelons/pumpkins/etc) or other products and they just break them down for recycle. You might get them free. Good for larger volumes or getting a bunch of different stuff all at once.

Steel banding, if you do pallets there's an 84" height limit, I stack pallets when I can but they need to be secure so I use bands to do that. I lucked into used banding equipment so I didn't have to invest much into that

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

gaylords... dang you must get a lot of scrap.

Amounts vary, I'm fortunate to have a local small scrapyard that helps me out and once I have enough material I start packing a pallet or two that they can load onto a truck to ship out.

Typically I don't fill an entire gaylord with a single material, I'll get halfway, then use the walls of the box to contain boxes or barrels of other material and then if there's height left I secure another pallet on top.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

ok that makes a lot more sense.

It’s a felony to use first use usps materials for any reason other than as marked. Just pointing that out.

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Really?

I don't ship anything in just those boxes except through usps.

_________________
Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Reusing Amazon boxes works for me.

As a mentioned on another post of yours I use a commercial book shredder to shred cardboard. I haven’t bought internal packing material in almost 20 years.

I pack small boxes by class. Band larger boards cross tie with zip ties. Place smaller boxes and tied boards in larger boxes.

My favourite choice is buying used wardrobe boxes from my local U-Haul location. They sell them new for $40 but used they’re $5.

I use the strip cut cardboard sheets to pack it all safely inside the wardrobe box.
The hen using a shipping service you can get measurement based rates for the box that are lower than the pure weight prices. USPS, DHL, FedEx and nearly all LTL companies offer discounts for particular measurements. Cubic rate, preferred dimensions, etc.

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There are multiple U.S.C. 18 codes that cover it. The box itself tells you not to misuse it..

If you get caught the best case scenario is the receiver will be charged the actual priority rate or priority express rate for the package. This has happened to me with Ebay items sent to me in a priority mailbox box wrapped in paper or plastic.

The worst case scenario for the sender is up to $250,000 fine and/or 30 to 90 days in jail. Depending on how good or bad the mood is of both the local postal inspector and the judge that hears the case.

As a large volume shipper I tend to warn people. The number of abusers that are caught is fairly small but be warned of the fines if you choose to do it.
Those materials cost money to make. The cost is included in the postage for the class. The more cost they don’t recover the higher the postage rate goes.

Nasty scary warning mode over

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That's annoying.

Well... Don't listen to me folks

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort