Percentage Cost of Shipping

[David Paule]

On my RV-3B project, I'm currently skinning the fuselage. The wings and tail are done but for the tips. I've got an engine and quite a lot of the miscellaneous systems or components, but certainly by no means all of them. Since so many of the small stuff needs to get ordered when I need them, I can't simply order a bunch of stuff in one package. I included tools in this, too; they're sort of a necessary part of the project, after all.

So far, not counting the airframe kits (but counting some replacement parts), my overall systems shipping cost is 5.3% of the total cost of the systems. It might have been a little higher but the engine shipping cost was included in the overall price so I couldn't include it separately. If I didn't include the engine at all, the systems shipping cost would have been 7.5%.

The cost of shipping the airframe kits themselves would have been 11.4%, except that my delivery was shared with another fellow's, and I paid less for the first increment.

Perhaps this might assist someone who is thinking of joining the builders here.

Dave

[BillL]

Originally Posted by David Paule

On my RV-3B project, I'm currently skinning the fuselage. The wings and tail are done but for the tips. I've got an engine and quite a lot of the miscellaneous systems or components, but certainly by no means all of them. Since so many of the small stuff needs to get ordered when I need them, I can't simply order a bunch of stuff in one package. I included tools in this, too; they're sort of a necessary part of the project, after all.

So far, not counting the airframe kits (but counting some replacement parts), my overall systems shipping cost is 5.3% of the total cost of the systems. It might have been a little higher but the engine shipping cost was included in the overall price so I couldn't include it separately. If I didn't include the engine at all, the systems shipping cost would have been 7.5%.

The cost of shipping the airframe kits themselves would have been 11.4%, except that my delivery was shared with another fellow's, and I paid less for the first increment.

Perhaps this might assist someone who is thinking of joining the builders here.

Dave

Small orders are the killers. Some outfits have shipping at around $8 for little stuff. Spruce will ship 1st class mail. $2.61 for a small envelope, hard to beat. I am hoping to keep the shipping below 20% of the part value for all the small items, but near the end, I just gotta have it and pay the price up to 50% of the $15 item price. For me shipping still beats driving around and spending the extra time.

A person might do well (early in the build) to open a UPS account and use the shipping number for lowering overall costs.