The automated package sorting I'm told includes dropping packages from one conveyor belt to another, and stuff can fall up to 6ft (though more likely when something gets clogged/jammed up and packages fall off of the conveyor system). 39kg/90lbs is heavy enough that it probably should be palletized/crated and go freight. I'd probably pick a postal service, or DHL as my first pick for shipping ~50lb internationally. Pat On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 2:30 PM Henk Gooijen via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

I'm reminded of a legendary story from a long time ago, of a DEC disk being air-shipped to a customer. RP03? Not sure, but something of that size class. The story was that the shipping company hadn't strapped it down properly, so when the plane applied takeoff power, the drive slid backwards in the cargo hold. Fast enough to exit the hold through the airplane skin, landing on the runway with a nice bounce. The drive was taken back to Maynard, where it was observed that the corner of the frame was badly bent. The techs propped it up on a cinder block and turned the drive on; it worked fine. Sure sounds like a fairy tale, but it's a fun one. paul

I had an interesting experience with UPS - they shipped me a tape library from the U.S. to Canada... when it arrived, the inside was completely trashed. As in, no recognizable components bigger than a credit card. UPS insisted that the condition of the tape library was as they received it for shipment. Until I sent them a photograph of the puncture mark made by THEIR forklift, right through THEIR shipping documents... From: "cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> To: "cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 12:21:39 PM Subject: Re: Shipping from Europe to USA Friend who owned a larger regional ISP back in the day bought a new Ascend MAX. It shipped UPS and arrived with a perfect boot print on the side of the box. To this day we still make jokes about UPS playing soccer with the package. (Semi-related side story; A few months after installation, the Max started dropping calls on one line card. Ascend refused to RMA it because it passed diagnostics. They went back and forth over for a week or so until one day their sysadmin had enough; He calmly removed the card from the chassis and, with an Ascend tech on speakerphone, smashed the thing to bits with a hammer. ?Oh, it just failed. Won?t pass diagnostics anymore.? He got his RMA number. The replacement card worked without issue for the next several years.)

On 8/22/2019 6:23 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: At Microdata, we were touring the country on a mission to fix some bugs that customers were having, and happened to? be in Dallas when a problem with one of a customers drives was serious enough we had to pull and replace it. The drive was shipped counter to counter same day on Delta.? We went to the Delta Freight @ the airport to pick it up, and the guy on duty went back to get it after some delay.? I think we were the first ones to get there for that flight, and he was absent for a while, but some yelling got his attention. Anyway we go to the dock which is at the front of this 30' long bay which went out the other end, and waited.? He was told it was heavy, crated, and needed a hand truck.? Even offered ours. After about 5 min we here this crash, then another, at about a 5 or so second rep.? After about 5, the end of a crate about the right size to be ours appeared.? It was tilted up, and then fell out upside down as the guy flipped it over again. He had gotten in about 10 of those flips before we used some salty language and told him to stop and we went with our handtruck. Made sure he saw the Fragile stickers all over and ignore them. Reported him to the 800# and called in to several places the next day. Anyway it worked fine. Also on the thread topic, PM'ed Steve.? I quoted a shipment to Latvia 2 days ago, breathtakingly expensive.? It was the same size as his parcel. thanks JIm

John Herron wrote: What use is insurance? If the unique machine that you have been searching for for so long it destroyed in shipping, the insurance company pays you less than it's value (they're not going to pay you greater than it's value) in money but does nothing to help you locate another example of the same machine and get it shipped safely to you. Maybe a better moral would be "If you want to make sure it arrives safely, go and get it yourself". Regards, Peter Coghlan.