It's downhill coming to the USA and uphill going to England. Takes more gas.

In the USA, more time is needed to understand things....

Does the shipping cost here have to do with fees added on by the importing country?

I know when I lived in Korea, to import a vehicle was quite expensive (equal to the greater between 10% of the original value of the car and ((1-(age of the car)*0.10)*original value of the car). So to import a new car would have an import duty of 100% of its original value. A 1 year old car would have an import duty of 90% of its original value. And so on until you get to a car older than 10 years, which has a duty of 10% of its original value.

Perhaps the US has a lower import duty than the UK?

I dunno, I just clicked on 'interparcel' and put some numbers in.
Just got some good news from the guy in the states, he's found a more reasonable rate from the US postal service if he trims the weight and length down a bit.
Ok, I can tell you're all hankering for a pic of my latest 'character bow' .



Character and 'snakey' bows are more for show that go, with that lovely row of knots and the fancy grain reminiscent of burr Walnut. It's a single piece of knotty Yew. She does shoot sweet, 40 pounds at 28" draw, but there's a little bit of a kick due to the extra limb mass round those pretty knots (more like a 50 or 60 pound bow).
Del

Nice bow....(what do I know though?)

To me, there's just something about a well finished piece of wood that no other material can elicite.

Nice job.

Simply awesome bow!

I've noticed that shipping to or from Europe is ridiculously expensive. I've had to source European gear from the States, for that reason.

I wonder if the jet stream has anything to do with this?

[Enough with the pathetic jokes.] I suspect that the majority of the price difference is the import/export tariffs for each country. I hope Apothicus chimes in here because he will certainly be our member that will give you the best insight on how to obtain an equitable shipping expense. Since this is an exchange of wood staves, I wonder if that might be applied to reduce the tariffs.

Can the Postal authorities and Shipping agents get together and fix standard rates for postal and shipping charges worldwide?.

This will happen only once we have one single global currency and one single global sovereign nation.

I got a handbook ,costing $20 from the Lightning Protection Institute in USA. They charged another $20 for postage to Canada,how do they justify.

Lucky UK! It's the reverse situation between Australia and USA, with Australia Post charging a fortune, made worse by USA requiring all incoming mail packages into USA over 500 grams to be individually inspected at an additional cost of A$9 each.

Moving on to China, they have wonderfully low rates for outwards airmail, which I am guessing is a subtle government export subsidy.

Mark Bingham
Relativity PL

blast

The U.S. needs to pay its executives more to maintain such great service.

You have actually saved [E]15 by shipping one bow in each direction. Anyone can see that..Now if you were to ship 3 bow in the right direction you would save [E]45. So you have made a profit of [E]5. Simple logic and this is why our economy is in such great shape

DEL.

Americans make heavier and big bows.

There are a lot of factors involved in determining "shipping" costs. Are you sure you have the same "terms" going both ways? These are usually factors in much larger freight moves but they may be influencing your costs as well. For example is insurance covered both ways? Is the delivery "to door" or "to terminal". Is customs clearance included? Duty? Taxes? Finally there is the old supply and demand factor, if more freight is going in one direction then there are empty planes or ships going in the other direction. Somebody has to pay for those so the cost per unit weight for freight moving in the low flow direction will be higher because there is less freight to cover the cost of fuel etc. Finally believe it or not it may actually take more fuel to go one direction as compared to the other due to wind and/or ocean currents. Now factor in the different cost of fuel on the different sides of the Atlantic and you are beginning to see why the costs are different for shipping east or west.

Then there is the shipping company executives outstanding credit card balance to be considered, the higher that is the more they charge to ship stuff.

Finally believe it or not it may actually take more fuel to go one direction as compared to the other due to wind and/or ocean currents.

Yeah, I do have A level Geograph.
Some good points I hadn't considered otherwise, it's just a tad irritating. What should have been a nice simple stave swap end up having to worry about evening up the cost.
Del
_{(I'm insisting my stave has a window seat on the plane )}

See! See, I told ya so. Takes more gas.

May I add another? Delivery to a regular customer of UPS, FedEx, etc., may be considerably cheaper than to, say, a home , even if it is nearby. I live out in the countryside in Wisconsin USA, and shipping stuff to my office in Milwaukee could save $5 - $10 over getting it delivered at home. Even delivery to a home in a small town 3 miles away was cheaper than to my home. The office got at least two visits per day from each of three different services; my home might get five deliveries per year, total. Additionally, the office had standing accounts with several services.

If your delivery points differ in this fashion, so will your fees.

It can also be true from sending standpoint if one end calls for pickup for shipping, and the other uses a fixed site run by the shipper. It can be worthwhile to run several scenarios for this reason. Include use of flat-rate containers, and of boxes meeting length-girth restrictions with the stave on the long diagonal of a square-girth container (you knew that!).

UPS or Fed Ex will have no trouble chopping the staves into little pieces to fit it into one of their standard size boxes. I'm sure Del and his customer will nave no problem reassembling them later.

(Is my distain for small parcel carriers showing?)

Is there a weight difference? The extra cost could be importation and delivery fees from the english side.

There will be a weight difference in the actual staves.
But I typed exactly the same info into the site with just the direction of travel changed and got £25 vs £40 depending on direction.
Del

This is not unusual in airfreight and (as Apothicus said) is to do with loadings for traffic direction, fuel cost etcetera. In my experience, at times, it can be 3:1

Meaning; you may find it will be different next week, month, or quarter due to seasonal demands. It seems a "we don't want your business" Oh hang on "we do want ..." sort of thing.

Sea freight is generally much more uniform - and far cheaper. But overall, I have always found freight out of the US cheaper than into.

_{p.s. fixed your title spelling - though it might not save you from ER}