attention MITS fiends . . .(NOW PACKING AND SHIPPING)

From: Jay West <jlwest_at_tseinc.com>
Date: Wed Feb 24 17:52:25 1999

>Packing and shipping though is a straight forward problem, which I would
>love to see a discussion of.
>
>Heavy old junk.
>The only thing I see practical here is the personal transport option, stick
>it in the trunk, back of the pickup, etc. I am curious about the creation
>of some sort of hardware hitch hiker pool, so people going from one place
>to another anyway, might consider hauling some junk for others besides
>there own junk.


With regards to shipping, here's my "magic" solution (like there is one) ;)

Find an associate (friend, spouse, customer, etc.) who works somewhere that
does a lot of shipping. These companies get HUGE discounts off shipping
costs from folks like roadway, ups, etc. Then see if you can have them do
the shipping in to their warehouse, and you pick it up from there. You of
course offer to pay their shipping cost outright (still a huge savings for
you off normal pricing) or you can setup a barter arrangement with the
company (like helping with their PC network). Case in point - I'm having a
pallet with a HP21MX rack, including 15231 power supply (heavy), cpu
(somewhat heavy), and 7900A disk drive (VERY heavy) sent to St. Louis from
California. Normal roadway shipping cost is around $695.00. However, a
customer of mine does a lot of shipping and their cost from roadway is
$195.00. I'm doing side consulting work for them to pay off their cost, but
in a barter arrangement you could easily offer them a bit more work/time in
trade than their cost for their trouble.

That all being said, I've driven hundreds of miles to pick up something for
my collection. But in a pinch, the above method can be better at times. I
myself would be MOST interested in forming some type of hardware pickup
arrangements with folks in other areas. I'll pickup stuff in my area for
you - you do the same for me in your area. Then once every so often several
of us could meet halfway to exchange the stuff for others and/or ourselves.
Perhaps each person gets partial gas reimbursement if it's only equipment
for others... who knows - I'm just throwing out ideas for all to throw
stones at. FYI - I'm in St. Louis, MO - a nice central location, so I'd be
happy to hold onto those 5 altairs and 8 imsai8080's for ya <grin - just
kidding - I don't even collect micro's>

Finally - I'm going to be in Irvine, CA (flying into LAX though) march
3,4,5, and a bit on saturday the 6th. Two questions - 1) Can anyone direct
me to any favorite surplus/salvage stores in the area I can scavenge in my
spare time while I'm out there? and 2) If anyone on this list is in the
Irvine area, I'd be happy to buy ya a cup of coffee and exchange stories
about when computers were real computers :)

See ya!

Jay West
Received on Wed Feb 24 1999 - 17:52:25 GMT