Glass Orders / Shipping

[Colin Allhose]

Hey All,

I have put in a few glass orders now and I am curious if there is a better / more efficient way to do it.

Both my orders have been from ABR & I have been very happy with them, No breaks in my glass, timely delivery, very accurate shipping quotes.

That said, I just ordered 80 lbs of asian clear on their 40% discount sale, after the sale on the glass the price was
$95 for the glass
$40 for cutting fee
$92 for shipping

I am not unhappy with what i paid at all, but after paying $132 for packaging and shipping I am kinda thinking I could have done better; although i did ship almost 100 lbs.

How do you guys order glass most efficiently?
Should I always get mine cut?
Is there a point (weight) you reach when its better to just make a bigger order and freight it?

Thanks!

[H1JACK3R]

Shipping is just a bitch anyway you look at it.

If you go freight, there's usually a lift gate fee in residential neighborhoods.

[p.j.]

full cases bulk frieght

[Dave Umbs]

^^ i buy 10-20 cases at once when i get clear, 30-50 pounds with color, full ground joint cases if i need joints. It is always cheaper in the long run to buy in bulk and it stops you from having to reorder every other month.

I would never pay to have them cut it before it shipped, seems simpler just to pay the difference of buying more and getting a pallet and having everything you need for a 3-6month time. I love only having to grab a few random cases of clear once every year vs, having to buy a case every other month

Shipping adds up too if your not keeping track of this you should be, im always surprised how much money is wasted shipping stuff each year.

Its a matter of weight and just not wanting to deal with ordering materials all the time are the main reason i buy in bulk, and its nice to save cash, and id say if you are buying 100+ pounds of clear at once you might be better getting cases and getting a pallet dropped off.

[Kato]

because of Salt City Glass I rarely have to order anything from other companies. I call up, place my order, than they come by like an hour later with my glass, truffles, and occasionally pizza. If you have the means to buy local try and do so. I looooovvvvvvveeeee not paying $300+ to ship glass to me.

as the gypsy punks say "think locally, fuck globally!"

[Greymatter Glass]

Buy glass by the cases, and enough cases to make it worth shipping via freight. When I buy glass it doesn't matter much if there's 200 pounds of 1600 pounds of glass on the pallet - the base rate for a company to handle a pallet, move it around a warehouse, and take space on a truck is going to cost me $150-200. After that there's the poundage which really only affects how much fuel it will take to move... a pallet with one case of glass on it might cost me $200, and a pallet with 1600 pounds of glass is going to be $250.

Check out sites like:

http://www.freightquote.com/freight/ltl/
http://www.freightcenter.com/freight%20quote.aspx
http://quote-4-freight.com/

You can use them to get a feel for what freight costs will be.... also, shippers can always get a much more accurate freight quote based on the carriers they use.

The freight CLASS is going to be a major factor in the cost, and not all the quote sites factor in class, but (and please, someone correct me if I am wrong) I think boro tubing and rod is generally somewhere around Class 75. (it's based on weight density and size of shipment) plus there are fees for "DO NOT STACK" and "DO NOT BREAK" (meaning don't break up the pallets and restack the boxes to make them fit better, just keep your damn greasy warehouse labor hands off my shit)....lift gates, appointment delivery, call notification, etc all cost more. Also, you cannot track freight like you can with UPS or FedEx, so expect to just be home or at the shop the day before and the day after the day your shipment should be in.... missing a shipment means you'll pay for redelivery. You can also sometimes save a few bucks if you can pick it up at the local terminal rather than pay for local delivery, but it has to be arranged ahead of time.

But basically, what I usually tell people, is if you're going to order more than 5 or 6 cases of glass, especially bigger cases like 44x4 and 38x4 - or if it's going to be a total weight of more than 500 pounds of glass, freight is going to be cheaper than UPS or fed ex.



Which comes down to "ZOMG I can't afford 5 cases all at once" ... which leads to the question: Why are you blowing glass?

If this is a hobby it's not a cheap hobby, and you're just going to have to accept that shipping costs will often out weight the value of the glass you're buying (when it comes to clear tubing and rod, anyways) and none of us have found a way around that. You might be better of order in small quantities because who knows what you might get into next, and unless you know a lot of other local blowers, moving off $1000 worth of glass you're not going to use anymore is difficult.

If this is your lifeblood and you blow glass to make a living and use enough glass that you're re-ordering more than 4 or 5 times a year consider a few things: You're going to need $2000-5000 for a serious order - get that money together. If you can't scrape up $2000 at this point in your life, get creative... sell off some old shit you don't need, ask your parents, talk to a LOCAL bank or credit union about small loans, (do NOT take out a title loan on a car), Smoke/drink/eat out less .. basically, do what anyone would do to save up some money for as long as that takes.... once you have the money, shop around, look to get quantity discounts (I know ABR, Glass Craft, UST, and EU all discount for larger orders), and get shipping quotes. If the glass is going to cost you $0.15 a pound more from ABR than from EU, but you live in Kansas shipping from Indiana will probably be cheaper than from PA or CA, so factor in shipping costs before you fret over the lowest per pound price on glass... Once you have your glass, SELL IT TO YOURSELF, keep an account of what you've used and make sure you set aside money to reorder. Better still is to charge yourself a bit more than you paid, so in the end you have more money than you started with so you can buy more glass, some tools, a nice meal, or a cushion on rent or whatever...


Also, take note, glass is a commodity and is sold by weight, not by piece and not by case... cases are just convenient ways to package a known mass of glass into a known volume of space... cases of 26x4 from Schott have 12 tubes per case, Simax has 25 tubes per case... so yeah, a case of simax will cost more than 2x as much right - for more than 2x the amount of glass.

Finally, paying to cut up glass so it fits in a smaller box might not be worth it. When I shipped cases with Fed Ex the "Dimensional weight" point for a 78x14x14 carton was 45 pounds - i.e. if whatever I was shipping weighed MORE than 45 pounds the bigger box didn't matter, I just paid by weight. Under 45# the bigger box cost $45-50 to ship if it was empty or weighed 44.5 pounds didn't matter... it was charged for being over sized, so is paying $40 to have glass cut up going to be a significant cast saving over shipping full length tube? The loss you'll get from cutting the tube (cracked tubes, unfinished ends, shorter tubes, more waste) can more than offset the $5-10 more it might cost to not cut it up.... I will say I know MY full sized shipping cartons cost me like $15 each, and the smaller boxes i could get for $3-5 each... so I would often tell people I have to charge $20 for packing and handling, because a $15 box and $5 worth of peanuts and bubblewrap isn't a cost I wanted to absorb... but at the very least consider it.

-Doug

[H1JACK3R]

Wait, same day free delivery?

Finally something good about Utah!

[fUmEsNiFfEr]

I live 20 minutes from Frantz so i have always had an easy time with shippping :chilling: The problem w/ Frantz though is that they are not the best supplier for alot of us boro folk. The have a decent color selection but fall short on quite a few

tools I've looked for in the past. And they DO NOT deliver with truffles :wes:

[Action Glass]

Man I wish I was in salt lake. I want someone to bring me pizza. My wife won't even do that....

[Kato]

It wasn't any little ceasers hot n' ready bs neither. Papa johns two toppings, with the garlic butter! That's love I tells ya.

[hedcraft]

Simply put, you need to buy way, way more. $100 of material is no incentive for anyone to give you a deal. If you'd bought $1000 worth of glass, and didn't have it cut, you would pay maybe $50 more for shipping, and it would amount to 20% of your order subtotal, instead of 150%. Never have your glass cut, that was half the order value right there. You're still around $3 /lb which is decent for china glass, although it's almost 3 times what you could have payed for it.
Here's my basic strategies to keep costs minimal.
Order domestic color by the pound, never ounces unless you're trying new colors.
Order china color by the case. Breaking cases can add as much as 25% to the cost.
Order Domestic clear by the pallet (10 cases.) You can get Simax tube for as little as $4 /lb delivered, only $1 more than you're paying for china glass
Try to order around $500 at a time, don't order less than $200 unless it's an emergency.
ABR has a discount program, get it asap. You'll have to remind them you have it every time you order, but it will knock up to 30% off your costs instantly.
NEVER HAVE YOUR GLASS CUT! That's what apprentices and girlfriends are for.

[Colin Allhose]

Thanks for the advice everyone, this answered all my shipping questions


Simply put, you need to buy way, way more. $100 of material is no incentive for anyone to give you a deal.
Try to order around $500 at a time, don't order less than $200 unless it's an emergency.
ABR has a discount program, get it asap.
NEVER HAVE YOUR GLASS CUT! That's what apprentices and girlfriends are for.

It was an ABR 40% off asian and my first clear order, i figured it would be the cheapest way to get a small selection of rod and tube to learn with. I got antsy with the 40% about to end and just took what small extra money I had to place an order and get some material to start working with. I'm hoping this first 100 lbs will get me a few months of learning while I save up for a larger order...
After paying almost 150% of the glass worth in shipping & cutting I figured a much larger bulk order and freight was the only (& obvious) way to save on shipping. Glad you guys verified that for me...

I guess a part of me was hoping there was a more efficient way with smaller orders, as I've been dumping all my extra money into trying to get started, get equipment, build my studio, get lessons, etc...

but in the world of lamp working I am quickly learning- If You're gonna play with fire, you're gonna spend more than you imagined if you wanna do it right, haha.

oh and as far as my girlfriend cutting my glass, well shit, She won't even make me a sammich; I have to get mine from funksizzle

Thanks Guys!

[H1JACK3R]

Poor funksizzle.

I wonder if he ever ended up cross firing those phantoms?

[Greymatter Glass]

I think he just got hooked up on a Cobra and started making beads.

[Boozeclues]

I never have had luck with this but you might want to talk to some of the bigger glass shops/artists near you and see if you could go in on their order and split shipping or something.

I wish the glass companies would get more shops to distribute for them. I dont know all the politics and stuff involved but there are two large well known shops near me that offer lampworking classes, are "sponsered by" companies like ABR and EU, and yet neither sells any materials or equipment. This baffles me.

[Oxiderush]

I had spent some time trying to figure out the best ABR Asian clear order, in regards to shipping. The sale just started again, so I thought I'd revive this old thread and add in my experience.


I purchased 50 lbs of mixed rods and tubes, as well as a few glass joints. I opted out of the cutting service, and my shipping was 42 bucks. Not factoring for the little stuff, my glass cost me $0.84 a lb to ship (uncut in a long box). Your glass cost you $1.65 per pound to ship (ship + cut costs. Although the cutting fee is not a payment to the shipper, it was a requirement for the glass to fit in a certain box classification). Just so were talking about similar shipping, Google maps puts your location 800 driving miles from abr, I'm 880 miles from them.


I'd really like to know how many pounds of glass I can ship before the shipping cost per pound starts going up. I'm guessing that packing the box they use completely full would yield the best results, but with my luck I'd order one pound too many and end up oversized in a larger classification 3x the price. Has anyone found the optimal order to ship ground yet? I would assume it depends largely on the diameter of tubing as that would affect package density. There has to be a balance between size and weight. I will say that if ABR happened to magically know the optimal box weight to ship, I would have easily bumped up my order. Shipping is such a big thing in the glass supply industry.


Lets just say pallet shipping will be around 200-250. At my current ground shipping rate, I could only move approx 238-297 lbs (broken down into separate 50lb bundles) That's a lot less than the 1600 a pallet could hold. Once I get to where I can use that much glass, I may have moved on to schott or simax.



I will include a copy of my invoice and shipping quote in case this helps anyone. There's also the note I wrote in the comments section when I ordered. *
At that time I thought Asian rod and tube was all 4 ft, misprint somewhere that stuck with me.




Date Ordered: Wednesday 29 January, 2014

I called today to ask a few shipping questions, and they thought I should write this into the comments. I am unsure if cutting the glass will save me any money with shipping. I'm purchasing around 50 lbs of asian glass, all 4 foot in length. I noticed some full cases around 50 lbs, so i would think it's easier to ship whole. I quickly read the note about cutting for shipping, and am very concerned about the cost of shipping increasing, and having $25 in cutting costs on top of my minimum $64.82 already for shipping, it's over 1/2 of the cost of just my raw glass. Also, I would assume filling up a 4 foot box with more glass would me more cost effective(per pound of glass received) than having to pay someone cut it all. I would definitely buy more glass if somehow filling a box helps. I got the impression the cutting was mainly for people buying individual sticks of glass in their order. Please let me know the most economical way to ship out my glass. This is my first order of glass and want to figure out the best way to place orders with you. I'm sure once I melt through this practice glass I'll need to order more large bundles. Thanks.



Products
------------------------------------------------------
2 x BLUE ASIAN COLOR ROD 7-8mm (AR-BLUE ) = $20.00
5 x 12.0mm x 2.2mm Asian Tubing (at1222 ) = $10.00
1 x 9.5mm x 2.0mm Asian Tubing (at9520 ) = $2.00
12 x 25.4mm x 4.0mm Asian Tubing (at2540 ) = $24.00
4 x 14/20 MALE CLEAR GROUND GLASS JOINT (2MC ) = $4.00
2 x 19/22 MALE CLEAR GROUND GLASS JOINT (3MC ) = $2.00
1 x 19.0mm x 3.2mm Asian Tubing (at1932 ) = $2.00
1 x RED ASIAN COLOR ROD 7-8mm (AR-RED ) = $10.00
1 x AMBER ASIAN COLOR ROD 7-8mm (AR-AMBER ) = $10.00
1 x BEESWAX - Pure 1 oz Bar (BW1 ) = $1.60
1 x Asian Color Rod Black 7-10mm (ar-black ) = $15.00
4 x 14/20 FEMALE CLEAR GG JOINT (2FC ) = $4.00
1 x 16.0mm x 3.2mm Asian Tubing (at1632 ) = $2.00
3 x 5mm ASIAN BOROSILICATE CLEAR ROD (ar5 ) = $6.00
4 x 4mm Asian Borosilicate Clear Rod (AR4 ) = $8.00
2 x 19/22 FEMALE CLEAR GG JOINT (3FC ) = $2.00
5 x 7mm ASIAN BOROSILICATE CLEAR ROD (ar7 ) = $10.00
1 x 16mm ASIAN BOROSILICATE CLEAR ROD (ar16 ) = $2.00
2 x 12mm ASIAN BOROSILICATE CLEAR ROD (ar12 ) = $4.00
2 x GREEN ASIAN COLOR ROD 7-8mm (AR-GREEN ) = $20.00
1 x BLUE ASIAN COLOR ROD 12MM (AR-BLUE12 ) = $10.00
3 x 10mm ASIAN BOROSILICATE CLEAR ROD (AR10 ) = $6.00
1 x Graphite Rod 1/2" x 12" (850-090 ) = $4.76
3 x 25MM BLUE COLORED TUBING (btc ) = $24.00
1 x 7-8MM. WHITE ASIAN COLOR ROD (ar-white ) = $15.00
------------------------------------------------------
Discount Coupon a40 applied: -$70.40
Sub-Total: $147.96
ABR Insurance: $1.40
Handling Fee: $1.94
Total: $151.30




And the emailed shipping quote I received. I did later receive an invoice, but the prices weren't listed on it.




Hello David,

Welcome to our Business! Just a note to let you know that we will be shipping this order whole. We have estimated the shipping cost at 42.86. It’s only an estimate. You should receive a copy of your invoice thru email when its ready to ship. If not please let us know and we will send one. Thanks Again!







Kim-Customer Service Rep

ABR Imagery, INC

[funksizzle]

I leave this place alone for like 3-4 months, and people be sayin poor funksizzle and wanting to see my crossfire!

The only way your gonna see my crossfire is through your momma and or grandma(age pending). If your momma's over 55, then your sister. If your grandma's over 60 then your momma. and if your sisters over 30 forget about it. and if they're not discreet, forget about it.

This poor motherfer's been pumpin iron, gettin snacks from all the milf mommas, breakpoppin like spines dont exist as a figment of your imagination, becoming the next iron chef, and onto new ventures. There's more money in other areas, and a larger variety of industries. I still like glass, but I'm highly focused on big tickets.



ANyways, as mentioned earlier. Buy in Bul;k if ya can. Buy the 11 cases from ust, and pay for shipping on a couple cases here and there until it's time for another pallet.

a case about 20-40 lbs will run around 50 bucks. So, you'll spend equal amount on shipping. But really 100 bucks a case aint that bad, not like hawaii or alaska shipping fees for cans of spam or whatever.


To make it worth it, buy your big stuff like kilns etc with them for combined shipping.

When you reason with carriers, always be like yada yada I know it's one that you can just stick on top of two other pallets as a triple stack. Forget about about the do not stack on top shit, this ones the lighter one thats goin on top of two other pallets. Then compare rates, call em back, handle ya business, keep gettinto the freight classes, and do whatever you gotta do. Dont forget to get your refund on pallets your not sure of the weight on either. Then have them weigh it when they pick it up. Ask the forklift driver to do it, but you know dont be a dick about anything and you do the work so he's on your team. Stuff like that.

Find a company that will deliver to somewhere you can pickup from, prfereably at a commercial location. Break stuff down on the truck and transfer it to the ground to save that 50 bucks. Just dont get the driver all pissed. Cut it, and get the f off his truck before he even gets his pallet jack in it.

[Simian]

I try to buy in bulk as often as I can. When I visit Salt Lake City I try to pick up as much as I can from Salt City Glass since I don't have a supplier within 300 miles of me.