What's going on with shipping costs?

adorshki

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Here's the thing: why not shop from my armchair, where I can search for the best pricing and free shipping? I even get our dog food delivered, in fact that was one of the five packages that were on our doorstep today.

Good points but it also depends on what you want to shop for.
Personally I don't want to buy shoes on the internet, or fresh food either.
I only started using it myself because certain items that used to be staples of my shopping stopped being available at retail. (Stresstabs; Mug Shaving soap, and Louis Raphael brand slacks to start).
Then that fan brand I mentioned earlier, and scrub sponges. The list keeps growing
There are certain items I want to be able to examine in the store, example, jeans: even the same specs from the same maker aren't all 100% identical, so being able to try 3 or 4 different ones to find best fit was important to me.
Also since I had to go to the store anyway it was all still covered under the gas budget.
But take away the stuff I bought regularly even if not weekly, and there's less and less incentive to go to the brick and mortar and support local businesses and jobs anyway, it's a vicious circle.
Also, just like an old fashioned record store I want to be able to just roam and see ALL the variety available, to be surprised by something I only saw because I was just "browsing", and not have to depend on some software to "suggest" stuff based on simplistic connections to my shopping or browsing history.
That just keeps steering you down the same old ruts and it ain't about enhancing or enriching your online experience, it's only about trying to extract more greenbacks from anxiety compensation buyers.
grrrr.....
:smile:
I hate the traffic, the parking, the mindless walking around like a zombie, the sensory overload of cheesy Christmas music and people shouting...and that's just at my house! LOL.
Sure I hate crowds too, it's why I get up at 6:30 AM even on Saturdays to get my weekly grocery shopping out of the way before the stores and streets are crowded.
I AM sympathetic to folks who may have a significant distance to travel just to get to an old fashioned store at all, though.
Oh, the music thing:
I remember once when I was about 14, going to one of the early enclosed malls and being in a pretty good mood which gradually turned to an unexplained mood of anxiety. I kept asking myself "What are you worried about?" until it dawned on me that the muzak was turned to a barely perceptible volume and it was irritating.
The effect was compounded by being inside an enclosed environment, a new variable for the shopping experience, so the background noise of people which is already subliminally stressful was compounded by music whose nervous rhythms were the only distinctly recognizable feature.
You can't convince me the folks who sold the system to the mall owners didn't pitch it as a sales stimulator, whether the phenomenon of anxiety purchasing was known at the time or not (1970-71).
But yes I started hating malls ever after, too.
Except they turned into a place to meet girls, too.
("Oh, they're playing the second side of Led Zeppelin IV! This is a great time to go ask that girl by the record store if she wants to got to a movie with me!")
:glee:

And back to the original question, "What's going on with costs?" found this pertinent story on the news feed this AM:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...rs-stranded-and-jobless/ar-BBXXdx6?ocid=ientp
And:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-bloodbath-freight-volume-boost-2019-8
What catches my attention is that while we've been told by paper mills that there's a capacity shortage, one of those articles states there's actually a surplus of available carriage stock. I have to guess that even though there's apparently enough trailers to meet demand, if so may truckers were going bankrupt perhaps the issue was still lack of available companies to hire .
Another one did mention the difference between spot freight and contracted rates too, and that spot freight can be surprisingly more costly than contracted rate freight.
 
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dreadnut

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Shipped another guitar yesterday, Guild B-301A Lefty bass. BIG package when we got it all properly packed up. Too big for priority mail, had to go ground. From MI to IL, $88.00 with $900.00 insurance.
 
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