In January I agreed to make a six-foot wide Wheel of Fortune for a guy in Illinois. He had seen my video showcasing my 8-foot wheel of fortune and asked how much I would charge to build one for him. Although I enjoy building stuff, I spotted a problem right away: How would I get a wheel of fortune from Sacramento to Illinois? The answer was easy, my customer would come pick it up! He had a panel van which could hold everything. I told him I could have the project finished by April.
A month later, the wheel was finished. Unfortunately customer had had a change of heart. The drive from Illinois would take at least three days and hundreds of dollars in gas.
"Can you explore how much it would cost to ship it?"
Although not completely unexpected, this wrinkle presented me with four new problems:
For anyone that doesn't know, you can't ship a 200 lbs. box at the Post Office. The USPS weight limit is 70 lbs. and the UPS weight limit is 150 lbs. With the sizes I was working with, my item was considered freight.
I had a few ideas for shipping quotes. I knew about a shipping broker called uShip, Uber Freight and FedEx freight service. I was also directed to Shipping Direct, a broker out of Florida. But I needed more information before I could even get started:
How much would the packed up pallet weigh? How big would it be? Would it be top-heavy?
My first attempt, the Uship website, met with failure as the site couldn't handle my quote and asked me to try again later.
I would have preferred to disassemble the wheel after the client had seen and spun the finished wheel, but this was not to be. The next best move would be to take a series of photos to aid whoever had to re-assemble it.
I disassembled the Wheel, and tried stacking the parts up in a way that would fit onto a pallet.
This process required one hundred little decisions, as I had to predict what the customer was capable of re-assembling at his house in Illinois. For every screw I took out, I'd have to write instructions on how to put it back.
An easy decision was to pack the two halves of the wheel next to each other, a six-foot half-circle which was about a foot wide.
I must have entered my phone number with one of these sites, because a broker from Shipping Direct called me. Like most people, I hate salesmen calling me, but in this case I had a bunch of questions that only a pro could help with.
Using 220 lbs. weight and 7' pallet width, I got an estimate for $985 shipping to Illinois. This was actually more than I had quoted to build the Wheel of Fortune, so it was a little painful for shipping to cost so much. However, it was nice to feel like the ball was rolling.
I gave the news to my client and he confirmed that he would prefer paying $960 for shipping over coming to California to get it himself.
I found a free pallet being offered on Craigslist and dragged it back to my house. This was the base for everything.
Now, it was time to make a crate! I borrowed my brother's truck and bought two more sheets of plywood and some more 2x4s. I ripped the 2x4s into 2x2s and screwed together a frame around the two halves of the wheel. I cut plywood sides for the wooden frame and cut handholds into them. As the crate went together, I realized that every part of this crate was HEAVY. I was undoubtedly over-engineering it.
Change of plans. I decided to try replacing the two largest sides with sheets of cardboard instead.
Never in my life have I bought sheets of cardboard, but I needed some extraordinarily large sheets, so I went to Home Depot. The best thing they offered was heavy duty moving boxes. I could open these boxes up to cover my crate. It worked like a charm!
One of the photos I sent to help with Wheel of Fortune re-assembly.
I don't have a pallet jack to move a pallet around, and I don't have an industrial scale to weigh my crate. I knew I could calculate a rough estimate, but shipping companies can assess a monetary penalty for guessing low. Like a $100 penalty.
To avoid this, I had to weigh the individual parts of my wheel, base, crate and pallet and add them up.. about 224 lbs. total.
The wheel of fortune sat in my living room for two weeks looking like this. I was definitely ready to get rid of it, but I wasn't sure how to avoid being overbilled and avoid having the wheel damaged en route.
I sent photos to my new shipping agent, asking about height limits and weight penalties, residential driveway pickup, and having a crate which overshot the length of the pallet. He reassured me that everything was fine, but that I should extend the width of the pallet with two 2x4s, so that the crate wouldn't overhang the pallet surface.
You can see the 2x4 pallet extensions on the left and right side of this photo. You might be able to also see the four screws that held the black base to the pallet.
I used wood, cardboard, packing tape, screws and nails to get the crate together. Usually pallets are wrapped with plastic film, but I just used kitchen Saran Wrap for that, instead of buying "pallet wrap". I didn't think I was going to get reimbursed for packing materials, so I tried to save as much money as possible.
With my final weight and dimension set, I got another shipping quote from my agent: $960. We set up a pickup day and time, and the agent reached out to my customer for payment.
He paid the next day, and everything was set!
This was a great relief to me, because I was worried I would have to front the shipping costs and would have to collect the money myself.
I was paid, shipping was paid, and all I had left to do was to wheel this thing out to the curb and wait for a truck to pick up!
The truck was
scheduled to arrive within a three-hour pickup window, so I had plenty of time to drag everything out to my driveway and re-palletize it.
When the delivery truck arrived, I exchanged paperwork with the driver and he checked the address labels I had added to the crate.
He had arrived with a full sheet of identical bar code stickers that he began sticking everywhere onto the crate and wrapping. He then lowered his lift gate and lifted the pallet onto the truck.
Sure enough, he had to pull my crate out and rearrange a few pallets inside to fit everything, before finally squeezing my pallet into the truck.
Then the driver waved and drove away! Good bye Wheel of Fortune!
I had a tracking number, and was able to check up on the route for the next ten days as the crate made its way over to Chicago. I found it interesting that the shipment actually travelled West, 100 miles to San Francisco before heading east again! The shipments must have been consolidated onto a truck full of Chicago-bound pallets.
The shipment arrived in Chicago and was delivered to the client without incident! I hope he was able to reassemble it and get it set up how he liked!
I wouldn't know because he never wrote me ever again!