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Brainstorming the Boxes URGENT REQUEST
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TerraHertz:
And THEN... there were more gremlins. Eventually sorted, so it's still good.
AFTER placing the order with the box company https://www.uline.com, two things happened:
  1. My bank auto-blocked the payment, thinking it fraudulent. I fixed that, payment went through.
  2. Uline sent me an email saying "sorry we didn't have that box size in sufficient qty, we are shipping
     boxes 20 x 12 x 20" as substitutes."  This was on the US weekend, their computer system said the
     boxes were in stock, but apparently when someone checked the Reno warehouse, they weren't.
     Now the warehouse was closed, no way to find out how many there actually were.
     I paused the ship-out, waiting for word of how many correct size boxes they had.

 At that time we were still hoping for a container loading operation on Wed 19th, USA time. Getting tight...

Turned out ULine only had around 120 of the 18 x 12 x 18" boxes (that were a good fit to the container.)
In the meantime I'd worked out an arrangement of the larger boxes that was more complicated and
had some downsides, but worked. The stated box dimensions are internal, and for the container fit
you have to allow for the cardboard thickness, squish/swell guestimates, box orientations, amount of
gap packing material needed, leaving space for dessicant packs, etc.

I approved the substitution. They shipped the larger boxes.
Those are now stored at the company that will do the packing.

The US shipping company failed to arrange the container onsite for Wed 19th. Or even contact the
packing company. Supposedly 'not enough notice to secure a ship booking' and they won't provide
a container until after they actually have a ship booking.

Current status: still all go, waiting for the US shipping company to establish direct contact with the US
moving company and arrange a mutually agreed date for the packing onsite.
Which won't be this week, so I can relax and do other stuff for a while.

Incidentally, I found out that there is global tracking of shipping containers. If you have the container
ID code, you can see its movement history and forward schedule. It's cool.
Discovered this because I have a pallet load of stuff coming to Sydney from Chicago, that pallet
is in a container, and I was given its number for tracking.

   https://www.track-trace.com/container

But sorry I am not giving you the container number. And they include a check digit, so probably making
up numbers won't work.



Drewbie:
 It's been a while.

Update?

peter-h:
I wonder if this is of any interest
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/anybody-wants-old-data-books-(uk)/msg4133125/#msg4133125
TerraHertz:
Quick update.

As I mentioned, the arranged shipping shedule fell through. The US shipping agent said that they had a ship slot booking cancellation. Lots of trouble getting ship bookings. So they were going to concentrate on their established customers, and they pulled out entirely. The Oz local shipping agent I was using works only with that US company, so they were out too.

The US West Coast ports really are messed up. That container with a pallet load of books of mine from Chicago, sat in Long Beach while being bumped off three ship bookings in a row. FINALLY made it onto a ship, got here and reached me OK. That ship was called the LIBRA, which is amusing since that's my star sign. And also of the 'friend of our family' in Chicago who did the packing and shipping.

Anyway, the storage unit full of manuals. Are still sitting in that storage unit. Because with no ship booking in sight, the options were to have the moving company pack them in boxes and hold the boxes in their warehouse, or simply leave them in the storage unit until shipping in general improves. (Who knows when, if ever. Things can easily get far worse, and it's my feeling that they will. So time is important.)

The 'pack to boxes and truck to warehouse' operation cost quotes was nearly US$8000. And then the storage cost was US $620/month. Or was it $520? I forget. But the current storage unit is $300/month. I've prepaid it for a few months and will probably have to extend that.

I also don't like the idea of having them stored in the moving company warehouse. Quite apart from the monthly cost, I suspect it might be difficult to ever extract them, even if a container + ship booking could be arranged.

Also considering the near $8K packing quote - for this I could fly to the USA, hire a small old van, buy a 20' seaworthy container and park it somewhere near the storage site, then do the packing into boxes and piling boxes in the container, myself.
I like this idea a lot. Many plusses. It would take a week, maybe two. I could live in the van... (I don't mind roughing it.)

Once they are actually packed in a shipping container, there are a lot more options.
For eg perhaps have the container trucked over to the East Coast, and onto a ship there.
And some nice potentials. Like riding in the truck from West to East coast so getting a 'free' US road trip. And more... my son is living in Panama City, Panama atm.

The big obstacle involves the 'topic forbidden here' ie we (people with something in common we are not allowed to mention) are not permitted to leave Australia [because stupid, fraudulent reasons.] But there's been an unexpected positive development with that, as of yesterday. Still many things need to be checked out, and plans I don't wish to advertise beforehand. Plenty of points of potential failure.

This project requires two things: money and patience. I have both atm.
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