Beer shipping tips

I second what @ewwiccc said but make it a 3 shipper so you have room for an extra

 

One box. I've used old Amazon boxes, old shoe/sneaker shipping boxes as well as bottle shippers...plenty of options to ship two bottles in

Just have to make sure you wrap and secure properly.

 

Going to mexico for a vacation in a couple of months and planning on checking some high profile beers to enjoy while I'm gone. I'll be walking over the border via cross border ex from San Deigo then catching a flight from via tijuana airport. My plan is to put them in my suitcase in a styrofoam shipper and tap it up. I was originally not apprehensive about it all until I was reading up regulation on it. I believe if you bring alcohol it has to be above a certain % (I forget exactly), which beer is not. Anyone have any issues doing this. I just want to be very certain before I venture bringing out the big guns abroad only to have them stripped or taken from me!

 

bumping this

 

As long as you are checking your suitcase, you should be fine. I have done this several times with beer and wine (although only within the States) and have never had an issue.

Not relevant here, but nice to know, if you fly with Alaska Airlines from certain wine regions they let you check a case of "wine" for free. I flew back to LA from Portland this Spring with a case of De Garde, checked for free!

 

A quick search on taking beer across says you can bring up to 3 liters pp and 6 liters of wine pp. Now on flights you're probably ok with the beer on your check in bag but better to call airline.

 

This is great to know! Thanks.

 

I went to a conference in Mexico last year. This is indeed the policy. I create my own sample bottles (for whiskey) for clients, and I was a little nervous that I would get in trouble. They don't give a fuck.

Only issue you may have is that whatever you are bringing BACK will NOT have a tag on it saying that it is duty free. They *might* try to give you a hard time at customs, I don't know. I only had small sample bottles, so they didn't ask, but I don't know if that is typical.

Also, if you decide to put anything in your carry on - those rules are different. You can have (I think) 2-3 of the small 1-2oz bottles, if above a certain % alcohol, and that's it. I checked everything.

 

Hey bros,

I usually use FedEx for shipping, but this time, I have to send mine to PO box. For USPS shipping, what kind of options do you guys use? And any tips?

 

Usually you pay for a “virtual box”. I.E. they hold packages for you.

 

How much are you sending and how far away? The price and volume possible is different depending on circumstances. For areas relatively close, regional boxes are cheap and fast. Otherwise flat rate works well. Both have specific box sizes and can hold only a certain volume.
As an example, from my location to California it is about the same price to send 3 USPS large flat rate as one of the commonly used small Home Depot boxes.

Also, you can ship FedEx to a PO Box.

 

Is this always true? My understanding was if you paid for a PO Box smaller than the box you recceive, you hve to pay a fee. The easiest way to do that, from what I found, was to get a “virtual mail box,” which just meant they’d accept packages of any size.

If this wasn’t the case, why do they sell different sized PO Boxes?

Also, they might give a 1-time courtesy if you got a package, but they won’t do it all the time. At least, that’s what my PO told me in Indiana before I moved.

 

Not sure, but I have a business address that is a PO Box. I receive packages all the time and haven’t been charged a fee. Very small town office, so they have plenty of space for packages ready to pick up. They put a yellow card in the PO Box when you have a package.

 

I have no experience shipping to a PO so I'm no help there.

After several years of trading I did somehow just learn about regional boxes from USPS a few months back. Pretty darn sweet if you can use them. No to mention, I prefer to give my business to USPS when I can. The free scheduled pick up is just another bonus of using them.

 

That's dependent on the volume of mail you get. They get mad at you if you let your box get overstuffed so if you can't pick up but once a month or you get mountains of mail daily you're supposed to get a bigger one.

My PO told me that we could have fed ex or ups ship to our po box. We even got a note a couple of years ago in our box that announced the official policy change from USPS. The note said that if an online order or something won't let you put a PO box in as the address to just put the street address of the post office with your box number as an apartment

 

I last checked in 2017 I think, and I ended up getting a “virtual” box at a ship center, so I never checked back in, and was certainly not notified since I wasn’t a customer. Good to know!

Probably makes me a little more nervous shopping directly to USPS if I am a frequent trader, but maybe that is just irrational of me.

 

Thanks for your comments. Its just one bottle (bomber), and within FL (from Orlando to Miami). I already packed it in a small FedEx Box cause I didn’t expect his address is PO box that I have to use USPS.

 

I am sorry, am not familiar with terms, but what do you mean by paying for a “virtual box”? My trader’s address includes “PO box”, so I couldn’t mail mine via FedEx. I need to send my bottle through USPS.

 

A virtual box is one where you have an assigned box #, but no physical box. It’s just a mechanism for the mailing center to sort and hold your mail/boxes for you.

In this case, it does not apply.