Unbelievable Shipping Damage w/pics...

I go to yards and pull good chevy truck parts to use or p*** on to help others put trucks back on the road. I got a chrome grill for my '63 so I put the painted grill up for sale. I sent it to a guy in Canada on the 67-72chevytrucks forum. You'll never believe what USPS or Canada did to that poor grill.

Before...





After...









Worst part is the grills from the '63 Chevys aren't exactly growing on trees. They don't repop them and straight ones are pretty hard to come by. I had it marked fragile and got insurance. The bad part is I insured it for $50 (what he paid). That was also the Customs declared value and you can't insure it for more than the declared value. I would've insured it for more but I didn't want the guy to get stuck with customs and brokerage fees based on declared value. It just ****s all the way around.


When the guy sent me the pics via email, I was literally speechless. I mean, how in the world can both ends of a steel grill be bent up at a 90 degree angle? The only funny part is I had USPS mark the package fragile because I was concerned about the good headlights being broken. They were the only thing to survive. Anybody else ever seen anything like this?

Oh, and for the record, I'm going to file an insurance claim. I figure USPS will blame it on Canada and vice versa. I'm also going to dig around and see if I can find him another grill. I feel terrible for the guy.

 

Get out yer hammer n dolly! hahaha I bet you dollars to donuts they're gonna say you didn't pack it well enough...

 

Looks like they went postal on it, that ****s big time!

 

that will rub out..no problem..

..seriously though..I had a similar problem with ups...took a month and a half to get a check..it was a huge ordeal and very hard to get payement..but i was persistant and got paid. Unfortunately..you have to decide is it really worth all the BS for $50

 

Man that ****s. A good friend of mine's father works for the USPS driving a truck and he has told me many time's how some worker's have no regard for items. I'm not going to go into details, but it's really made me think twice about shipping anything hard to come by or expensive.

Best of luck getting anything done about it..

 

Your damn right I believe it.....I use FEDEX whenever possible.....

 

wow, good job USPS!

Saw a 63 grille at the Tucson swap meet last saturday for $50, there are still a few around.

 

That just left me speachless. OMG, what the F happened? Makes me remember to always insure for more than the value.
JUSTIN CASE

 

I kinda think they would be right. I'd have packed that in a wooden box. 1/4" plywood box would have done the trick. Plus a **** load of foam.

 

It shoulda had a crate,
even a cheesy wooden 1x2 frame and cardboard woulda been sufficient.
I ebay bikes/frames alot and even a cardboard box needs some kinda wooden support,
even doorskin stiffens up a box enough.
TP

 

Damn that ****s.
I had an aluminum one shipped to me, no problem.

 

Looks like they laid it between two other boxes and sat on it. My daughter works for Costco in their Costco.com call center. She answers a dozen calls a day on flat screen tvs that UPS has broken. The ups claims agent knows her voice and doesn't have to ask who it is anymore.
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It was already $60 to ship a $50 grill. It missed the USPS max size by an inch length and width. Any bigger packaging, and it would've had to go UPS or FedEx and would've been around $150 to ship. When you get close to the UPS "large package status", shipping gets tripled. And for the record, I've sent out three grills and other sheetmetal previously with no problems, all via USPS from East Coast to West Coast, Canada, and everywhere in between.

And last I checked, steel was still stronger than plywood. If they monkeyed it up enough to bend both ends of a steel grill, I'm pretty confident they would've broken any plywood box too.

 

I always fear that... I got hubs last week box split wide open had saran wrap all around it holding it together with a sticker on it that said "we care "

got a transmission on teh was scared as hell what i'll get

not for nothing that grille should have had a proper box not kinda wrapped up like it is

 

hey Terd, lemme look in my stash tomorrow---I think I have a 63 grille.....if I do, I'll give it to ya
I hate to see stuff like this

 

man it looks like it was in an accident , or someone tried to wrap it around a phone pole swinging it like a baseball bat ???? thats insane careless

 

Go spend 5 minutes at any freight carriers terminal - watch them move freight - you'd put a crate around everything from then on. I ship tradeshow displays for a living.....sometimes the damn crate is more work than the display !

 

A 1/4 or 3/8 plywood stiffener down each side may have kept the box stiff enough that they couldn't bend it up like that though. I worked as the maintenance parts man in a big juice plant for six years and received a cart full of packages every day of the week and never got one that messed up.
If you go around appliance stores a lot of refrigerator boxes have some nice corner stiffeners in them that don't weigh much but would turn a simple cardboard box into something pretty strong if they were placed in it right.
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That's just plain old frightening.

 

It was in a proper box. I used three rolls of shipping tape and padding and bubble wrap inside the box. Not much more I could've done. The damage is obviously above and beyond being dropped of the back of a truck. Seriously. The grill is steel. Take one and try to bend it like that over your knee and see what happens.

 

I think, it's a damn shame a good vintage part was so damaged. The problem wasn't with USPS, it was in the way you packed the grille. It should have been packed in a wooden crate with plenty of room for styrofoam peanuts to cushion it. You have only yourself to blame! I've shipped with USPS and have never had any problems.

CRUISER

 

An accident is one thing, but that is ridiculous.

I remember speaking to a fellow years ago that used to work for UPS at nights loading trucks. He said of how some workers would throw packages from across the room into a bin, like a hail mary throw in basketball.

 

Yup I use to work at one of the big box trucking companys, you know the ones that run down the hyway with two or three pup trailers, well I was working the docks and I would put stuff in the trailers nice and neat and the boss said to just throw it in there anyone way, I said it will get broken, so what is what they told me, I quit after two weeks of that, could not do that and will never ship anything with these type. F them.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if they are handling a "Fragile" marked package in such a way to bend up a steel truck grill like that, I'm not really at fault here. The post office stamped it fragile, it wasn't just me writing on the box.

Imagine for a minute the force it takes to bend a steel grill like that AT BOTH ENDS. Seriously, the damage depicted is not what I would call typical or preventable.

 

I ship a lot of grilles and trim and always use round concrete forms.All the home stores sell them and they range from 6" to 16" diameter.I run lathe inside as stiffeners or use a 10" tube inside a 12" tube then wrap the part in thick cardboard and bubble wrap before putting it in the tube.Extra work and a little more expense but have yet to have damage(knock on wood).Tubes get around a lot of USPS dimensional costs and seem to take more abuse.

 

Mabe he was banging the mailmans wife...hahaha...sorry, that ****s big time!

 

ups ****s!!! I have a nice epson printer here I just got that is now junk, it was packed right, they hit it so hard it damaged internal parts in the printer. We make custom shipping crates at work for airplane parts, heavy wooden boxes, got one back not too long ago, had forklift holes right through it, they blamed us said it wasn't packed right!! these holes were punched through 1/2 inch pine. the boxes alone take a couple of days each to make. 5000 dollars worth of parts destroyed. I've gotten tailwheels back i've built where they have bent a cast steel fork. I have no idea how, we tried to bend an old one in a 10 ton press,couldn't do it. I'm lucky on the printer ,the guy was cool and refunded my money no problem. still mad at UPS though, I was looking forward to using it.

 

I learned a long time ago, a "FRAGILE" label on a box is like painting a bulls-eye on it, and I never do it anymore. I know you were up against a size limit, but a plywood backing would have given it enough support to make it. I stopped using UPS after the strike in '97. Fed Ex delivery is slow and unreliable. DHL was great, but they don't do domestic shipments anymore. With all the faults, USPS is lesser of all the evils.

 

That was one of the packages that did not fit very well in the trailer You know I can't get the door to close so just tap it in there with the forklift, just a little bit more OPPS!!!!! oh well it fits now.

 

Looks like they tried to bend that one.
The only think I can suggest is
Plywood, top and bottom, lots of tape.
Then put in in the box.

UPS won't insure my stuff, if they didn't pack it.
And their packing ****s.

Labeling anything FRAGILE, almost guarantees rough treatment.