Heck Of A Guy

The Idea

Buying airline tickets became more efficient and easier when sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia consolidated the data for various carriers, making it possible to compare costs, times, and duration of flights as well as purchase tickets and arrange rental cars and hotel rooms.

Analogously, at least three sites now make it possible to quickly compare the cost and speed of delivering a package of a specific weight and size to a specific location. Given that shipping rates can vary as much as airfares,¹ these are worthwhile services.

The Sites

The services offered at these sites vary.

RedRoller, for example, seems to be the service most oriented to online use by individual customers. It not only compares rates of FedEx, DHL, the U.S. Postal Service, Eastern Connection, and Overnite Express² but also arranges pickups, prints labels, and tracks packages.

iShip, which appears oriented primarily toward businesses rather than individuals, is owned by UPS but also offers shipping via DHL/Airborne, FedEx, and the USPS as well as UPS. UPS doesn’t permit RedRoller to link with its own delivery service.

PakMail declares it offers “a full range of carriers,” but as far as I can determine, does not specify which carriers are used. PakMail is oriented toward use of its brick and mortar stores although one can calculate shipping costs online. PakMail, like RedRoller, features a special package of eBay services.

Rates listed at these services are similar and often identical to those displayed on the carriers’ own web sites. These sites function well³ but all are in development and their offerings may change.

Recommendation

Inevitably, a site will offer comparisons of all shipping services, but at present the most efficacious methodology for the occasional shipper would seem to be finding the best shipping option offered at RedRoller and then, because RedRoller is blocked from crunching UPS numbers, comparing the best from RedRoller with the estimate from the USP site.

The Links

RedRoller






iShip






PakMail





Credit Due Department
Wall Street Journal

Footnotes

1. The WSJ notes that, depending on options and services chosen, the cost of delivering one pound box from Los Angeles to New York City can vary between less than $2 and almost $70↩
2. Eastern Connection, and Overnite Express are regional carriers↩
3. The UPS-owned iShip site, for example, does show its rivals to off list rates for some packages than UPS itself↩

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