Would Anyone be Kind Enough to Tell Me How to Ship?

[ButterflyGirl89]

Hi all!

I only have one bearded dragon, and a few day geckos. So my dubia colony has gotten out of control!!

I'm selling some on craigslist, but if I could ship I know I'd be able to sell a lot more and reach a wider audience.

But I've never shipped Anything living. Would anyone be willing to give me a step by step on how that works? I would Really appreciate it!

Maybe even some discounted buggies for whoever gives me the best/first answer if they want em?

 

[aussiefreak101]

Your post office will have 2-3 day priority boxes that you can grab for free. You just pay the shipping when you decide to actually ship. Get the sizes that you want, for dubia it's usually the small or medium. You can put them in a plastic container that's ventilated inside which is best so they aren't falling all over the place when the buyer opens the box. Have the person send you their address and you can estimate the shipping from that(if not using pre-made priority boxes), the priority boxes from the post office are flat rate if it fits it ships stuff. Small is about $5 and medium is about $10 for shipping. You send from your paypal account a request for money to the other persons email address and they do that part then you send them the box. Voila.

 

[randommonks]

I second using the post office flat rate boxes. They make calculating shipping a lot easier. I've ordered dubias a few times, and each time the order came to me with a couple of layers of egg cartons and then my roaches just dumped into the box with them and taped up. If you put them into a separate container and then put them into the box, make sure you put egg carton or something for them to hold onto inside the container and pad the inside of the box well so they don't rattle around. The best packaging I've had was a medium flat rate box with 3 layers of fresh egg crates. The egg crates fit perfectly inside the medium box. Make sure that if you're going to offer some sort of live arrival guarantee, to check the weather of the place you're shipping to. If it's too hot, you might want to add a cool pack or require a hold at the post office to make sure the bugs get to their destination in the best shape.

I've actually sent a shipment of dubias up north when I got rid of my colony, and it was a disaster, but I was shipping from the balmy south to the cold north. So if you do ship, make sure you do it properly. You might even want to contact a few sellers on this site who sell dubia and see what their methods are.

 

[Flynnthedragon]

I have sent Dubia to california to my friend and I used the flat rate boxes from the post office. If it is in the summer the easiest is to get the 5$ flat rate (small) and cut egg carton to fit in and just put how many in there and seal it up! For winter time and colder months you will need to put a heat pack in there. The 10$ flat rate box. Which is the medium, or maybe its 8$ cant remember, is the best to use during winter/colder months as it can fit the heat pack and the dubia much more comfortably. How you decide to ship your dubia is up to you. I have seen people use clean Poweraid/gatoraid bottles with the top cut off, and then when the dubia are in the top is taped back on and then placed into the flat rate box. When i got mine they were just in the box with a few egg flats free roaming, This way was a little bit of a pain because they all didnt want to come out and some actually got smushed between the little box flaps.

The good thing about flat rate boxes is you can print out the postage at home and all you need to do in run in and drop it off and the package arrives 2-3 days later (so just make sure you are shipping no later then wednesday or they wont get their until the following monday or so)