shipping

About a year ago I asked about label printer for shipping and people had some comments.

My requirements were a thermal printer that could print 4″ x 6″ sticky labels and connected via USB and didn’t require any special software. I didn’t want a mobile app, didn’t want Bluetooth, just a USB printer I could select like any other printer.

A few people suggested a Rollo, and they do have a USB model that seemed to fit the bill, though it was a bit pricey. I managed to save a little by getting a refurb unit.

Oh, I had originally looked at the iDPRT Thermal Label Printer but the company describes their printers as “Most Intellect Label Maker Machine” which did not instill much confidence in the company, so I went with the Rollo instead.

So when I got the Rollo up and running I had a few issues with it aligning the print properly. It seemed like the label would occasionally not feed correctly. I tried a bunch of tweaks in the printer setup to adjust the margins and nothing seemed to work. I assumed my refurb unit was garbage, and dug through the help docs and switched from Preview.app to Skim so I could save a print setting to print at 90% which fixed the issue, but…

It turns out all the software/print setting tweaking was for naught! All I had to do was get some Alcohol Prep Pads and clean the rubber feed roller! Since then it’s worked flawlessly. (And I do clean it regularly.)

It’s the classic case of hardware versus software and mechanical issues versus settings. So yeah, all good, very happy with the Rollo.

I use an old 2014 Mac mini to run my “shipping station” in my shop, and even though it’s running an older version of macOS it works just fine. The only other critical software on the machine is a web browser (Firefox) to work with Pirate Ship for the labels.

So now when I need a shipping label it’s a few clicks, hit print, out comes a label, and it get stuck on a box. Easy Peasy, as the kids say!

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Your second most important relationship is with your package carrier

Rule #10: Your second most important relationship is with your package carrier.

Dealing with shipping has been the most un-fun part of this whole process. That said, it has been very interesting being on the other end of the shipping world.

I’ve got a PO Box at the Post Office a few blocks from my house, and I gave some consideration to using the USPS (and while I certainly want to save the USPS, I can’t do it at the expense of my business.) Ultimately a combination of poor service and a lack of being open late ruled them out for now.

So on a recent Saturday I had plans to go to the UPS store near my house and talk with them about shipping options. I’d already set up a UPS account, and linked it to PayPal (yeah, I’ll get into payment stuff in a future post) but wanted to talk to a real person about the process. Sadly, the UPS store closed about 20 minutes before I got there, so I ended up going across the street to FedEx. The FedEx employee was extremely helpful, and explained how it all worked. The only bothersome thing was that I won’t know the actual shipping price until I have an address. Even if I ship 10 packages all the same size, weight, etc. they may all be different prices. I asked them to run a sample based on a size and weight I had, and when they needed an address, I gave them NYC Resistor‘s since it was easy to find with a quick search on my phone.

The FedEx employee also talked about shipping boxes, and I bought an 8x8x8″ box to take home and see if it was the right size. It was $1.75, and I’m glad I only bought one, because I can get about 6 of them from ~~Uline~~ for that price. Update! Uline sucks. They helped fund an insurrection. I stopped using them years ago. See Also: refuseuline.com

So now I’ve got an account with the USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I’ve also sold one unit, which I’ve shipped out. The shipping I charged was pretty close to what it actually cost to ship it. I’m not an expert on PayPal, but it looks like you can set things up to calculate shipping costs during purchase if you use UPSP or UPS, both of which can be integrated into PayPal. As I mentioned, I’m using FedEx right now. Oh, and FedEx needs a phone number to ship things (?) which I did not have on the PayPal order page, so I had to add that. So yeah, shipping is a pain in the ass.

OK, well, that’s all I want to say about shipping right now. I mentioned PayPal a bit, so I’ll dig into that in a future post. I’m also sure I’ll have more posts on the subject, even though we’ve covered all of the Ten Rules.

(See all the posts in this series: Begin, Stock, Buy Smart, Basic Rules, No Leeway, Be Open, Community, Manufacturability, Marketing, Shipping, Lessons Learned, The Real Costs.)