NEWS & UPDATES

January 21, 2008 In By Advent

The Inevitable, Dreadful, Tradeshow Shipping

While most of us like to think that with sev­eral months to plan before a tradeshow we won′t rush pack­ages at the last minute, it always seems to hap­pen. Here are a few tips when plan­ning your shipments:

1. Ship to the advanced ware­house. This means plan­ning fur­ther in advance, but it will save you the time and headache of wor­ry­ing about whether every­thing will arrive to the show site on time. Check your show book for the advanced ware­house deadline.
2. Freight items should be shipped via a tradeshow car­rier like Cham­pion Logis­tics or Eagle Global Logis­tics. These car­ri­ers will deliver and pick-up at spe­cific times set by your show dec­o­ra­tor, so they won’t leave you hang­ing dry with your booth still stuck in New York or Las Vegas.
3. Plan how many days your ship­ment should take to get to a par­tic­u­lar loca­tion. It may save you money. If you′re ship­ping via FedEx on the east coast, it may only be a 2-day ground deliv­ery, which is less expen­sive than 2-day express service.
4. Avoid show charges for FedEx deliv­er­ies to the show site by ship­ping any small pack­age to your hotel. Most hotels will hold pack­ages for you until you check-in.
5. Check it on board. Many 10-foot dis­plays are small enough to check-in on your flight. This will allow you to have your dis­play with you when you arrive and avoid ship­ping costs alto­gether. You may have to pay extra for weight over 50 lbs but it could be worth it com­pared to a carrier′s price.
6. Be aware that stan­dard car­ri­ers will not pick-up pack­ages from many shows. If you ship some­thing to a show via FedEx or UPS they may not be at the show after­wards to pick it up, requir­ing you to find a FedEx or UPS loca­tion in the city of your tradeshow.

The most impor­tant thing to remem­ber is plan ahead and save, save, save!

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