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It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

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Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#181

Post by philjohn »

jmyeet wrote: post #78

What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and g…

Happens (although less often now) in Formula 1 as well - brand new parts being sent over in a private jet, or commercial, to test and race that weekend.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#182

Post by unwind »

wcunning wrote: post #124
deepspace wrote: post #51

Since I discovered the availability of anvils on Amazon, I have always wondered about the economics of shipping them. Right now, I can order a 66lb "Happybuy" anvil for $153 with free prime shipping. One assumes that the $153 includes the cost of shipping it all the way from China in the first place. For comparison, a similarly sized anvil from a reputable local dealer costs $949 plus tax and shipping at the lowest r…

Two things: 1) that "anvil" is cast iron or potentially at that size, semi hollow steel. It's not great for doing anvil things and will likely break, whereas the "reputable" one is cast steel or wrought iron, both of which are much much much tougher for beating on. 2) The more interesting thing here is the market for kettlebells and other heavy weights -- they can go up to hundreds of pounds, though typically top out…

I realize I don't understand much of the life of someone so strong, but how do you wear out a 40+ kg kettlebell often enough to have a thought-out replacement plan?

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#184

Post by jhugo »

rags2riches wrote: post #165
dawnerd wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise some airlines don't even require someone to fly. I knew someone that would ship very expensive camera gear to film productions directly with an airline. They would check the cases and send it off. Someone would just go and pick it up. Obviously only really works if you're not dealing with customs. https://www.deltacargo.com/Cargo/

I thought terrorists had done the "check your bag and don't board" thing enough for it to be disallowed. But maybe this story took place a long time ago?

Many (most?) large airlines take cargo directly like this. It's not so much "check your bag and don't board" as it is "consign this cargo shipment" which happens to be taken on the same aircraft as passengers and their luggage. Unlike checked luggage you need to declare the contents of the packages etc., and presumably there is security screening.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#185

Post by Teknoman117 »

ultimoo wrote: post #170
toufka wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are opposite versions of that story where the drug is a specialized 1-off custom living biological product (often a patient's own engineered immune cells). An entire company's years of effort and existence are tightly coupled to a patient's survival, and sometimes they're hundreds of miles apart. Those plane tickets, with coolers of ice in hand, are crazy to me. And yeah, there are those cases where batch 1 was…

This sounds fascinating -- do tell more! Was this for a large cap company CEO?

The existence of these kinds of things makes me both happy and sad.

Happy - human technology is capable of these things.

Sad - only the hyper-wealthy can afford it.

Hopefully in 20 years treatments like these will be accessible to 'commoners'. So much progress has been made in the last 50 years that I wonder what the next 50 hold.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#188

Post by mattlondon »

lakis wrote: post #138
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that I haven't heard of small jets (fighters/jet trainers) being used for commercial courier services (although there are instances of military jets transporting organs for transplant, https://apnews.com/article/c1309c58720c78347c1ebbbade56d35d ). They can be privately owned and operated, are very fast, and tend to have hundreds of kilos of payload capacity.

This reminded me of "Police Camera Action - The Liver Run" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU 30 Minutes to travel 27 miles across London in the middle of the day ! Stansted Airport, Essex to Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London

Interesting. I've seen similar "convoys" of police cars with a motorcycle platoon etc with them many times. I assumed it was some VIP. I never considered it might be a organ transplant!

I do wonder if they'd do that today - save one person's life by ploughing through central London at 70mph? There are so many cyclists and pedestrians not paying attention - it would feel safer to just helicopter it over?

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#189

Post by b112 »

rags2riches wrote: post #165
dawnerd wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise some airlines don't even require someone to fly. I knew someone that would ship very expensive camera gear to film productions directly with an airline. They would check the cases and send it off. Someone would just go and pick it up. Obviously only really works if you're not dealing with customs. https://www.deltacargo.com/Cargo/

I thought terrorists had done the "check your bag and don't board" thing enough for it to be disallowed. But maybe this story took place a long time ago?

Packages like this can be more completely, visually inspected than luggage loaded en mass, 30 minutes before flight.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#190

Post by needle0 »

This reminds me of a guy in 2007 whose curiosity got him to cram around 34kg (75lbs) worth of lead bricks into the Japanese postal service's ExPack 500 flat-rate envelope, which had a supposedly 'impossible' limit of 30kg (66lbs) and were usually not checked for weight when sending. The post office clerk wrestled with it and eventually agreed to ship the thing. He didn't actually send it though.

https://sites.google.com/site/fluordoublet/%E3%83%98%E3%83%B...

A few years later, the ExPack was deprecated and replaced with the LetterPack envelope, which now has a limit of...only 4kg (8.8lbs). Hah!

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