Category: General commentary

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Small business shipping made easy

This may at some point begin to sound like a commercial, but it really isn’t.  I promise.  I receive nothing from anyone in return for writing this kind of stuff; I do it just to hopefully help out fellow small business owners.

I know (and know of) a lot of owners of small businesses who regularly ship packages all over the US and worldwide.  Most of them expend a lot of time and effort on shipping.  I suspect this level of hassle is the norm for small businesses; I have talked to several large dealers and distributors who offer to be my exclusive distributor and relieve me of the crushing burden of shipping and order fulfillment.  The truth is, order fulfillment and shipping take up a very small amount of the total time I spend running my business.

I know people who pack up each order, write the recipient’s name and address on the package (or print a label), drive to the post office and stand in line to have packages weighed and postage added.  Ugh.  Incredible.  I used to do that too, but it was years ago.  And filling out Customs forms for overseas shipments?  Torture!  At one time I seriously considered just NOT accepting any orders from outside the USA – -including APO/FPO addresses.

Others use on line tools like USPS’ Click-n-Ship to prepare labels.  It’s a lot better, but the user interface is clunky, and you either spend time cutting and taping paper to packages, or pay through the nose for expensive labels.  I looked into it, I even used it a few times.  It’s only marginally better than the trip to the post office.

If you ship more than a few packages per week, you owe it to yourself to go with a postage supplier.  I use Endicia, a choice I made after looking at them, Stamps.com and one or two others.  Pitney Bowes was at the bottom of the list by a wide margin.  I don’t remember the specific disadvantages of Stamps.com, but Endicia was the best suited for my needs.  With any of these services, you pay for postage on line, print your labels with postage included, and drop your packages off or have them picked up.

So why Endicia instead of Click-n-Ship?  With Endicia, I get a slight discount on postage and free delivery confirmation/package tracking.  Their software is installed on my PC, and can communicate with a USB postal scale to automatically weight each package.  I don’t use one simply because I know what 90% or more of my packages weigh, but when I see a good enough deal on a scale I’m buying one.

I use 4×6″ thermal labels.  They’re available for very little money, since they’re produced in vast numbers for UPS, Fedex and others.  I buy cases of 400-label rolls.  They go into the used Zebra LP2844 printer I picked up for under a hundred bucks on eBay.  In its former life it was used in a UPS store, and it’s given me three years of trouble-free service so far.  The really nice part?  I can print ANY kind of postage.  First class parcel, Priority Mail, Express, and international — INCLUDING the Customs form.  It’s SO nice to never have to fill out that stupid non-printer-friendly green form again!  Some forms, like an Express International package, can’t be done on a 4×6″ label.  For those I have the regular printer and USPS-supplied stick-on document sleeves.  Endicia prints all the required forms with postage, ready to go.

For $15.95 per month I get the ability to print labels without the postage amount shown…  so I don’t have to explain over and over to customers why I charged them $2.50 for shipping when the postage was only $1.93 (boxes, labels, printer paper and ink for the packing slip, packing material and gasoline are not free). I can get a refund on labels I don’t use; I can print return labels when a customer needs to return something.  In short — my shipping is as close to effortless as it can be.  And the post office employees love it when I drop off a tub full of packages WITH a USPS scan form so they don’t have to scan each package, just the form that puts each one into the system for tracking and delivery confirmation.

If you’re still writing out shipping labels, or if heaven forbid you’ve got a postage meter, you really owe it to yourself to check out Endicia.  They’ll usually give you a free trial period, and you don’t need anything special to get started — you can use your existing printer and plain paper or a box of Avery labels form Office Depot while you try it out.  Then you can develop your own process and streamline your shipping to take up less of your time and energy.

 

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AWESOME garbage collection job!

Man, the City of Omaha and Deffenbaugh are aces.  What a fantastic job of not only picking up the garbage, but making sure our street stays nice and quiet…  since you cna’t drive down it without zig-zagging around the chicanes.

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End of the Straight Talk experiment

I’m letting the Straight Talk Wireless lapse, and will sell or give away the phone.  Overall impression: The service is fine, just not the right direction for me right now.  The phone is not without its faults, but is good as a very basic smart phone.

The only real annoyance I’ve had is Straight Talk texting the phone a few times with upsells, and calling the house number to “remind” me that the service is expiring in a few days.  I suppose I can forgive the reminder calls (though I do wish they could be stopped without calling in to talk to a salesdroid).  The texts were a little annoying, though.

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Sheer heart attack

Queen_Sheer_Heart_AttackSo Wednesday I was headed to the airport, minding my own business, when it became apparent that something was really wrong and I should probably find an ER. I was right – something was wrong. In hindsight, I was wrong to think I needed to drive to an ER, I probably should have just parked and called 911. Anyway, I am now the slightly sheepish owner of a little chunk of metal mesh in one of my coronary arteries.

I’ve made some changes to my diet and exercise plans, of course. Lisa and I had already done a lot over the past couple of years to improve our diet, but of course there is always more to be done. Less cholesterol, less sodium, less fat, more fiber, more exercise. I’d been working on making changes, but apparently not aggressively enough and it caught up with me.

But, now I’m home and doing fine. I came home from the hospital yesterday (Friday). We took Buddy for a walk and I started getting used to taking a small array of pills that I’ll be stuck with for a long time to come — some of them permanently. I’m not complaining; I’m alive and still reasonably healthy and will be improving that. I’ll be around for the grandkids’ high school and college graduations, Lisa will have a husband, I can start seriously nagging her about smoking (grin) and I’ll be able to fly again.

Life’s good.

 

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Fixing my Droid 3 global keyboard

Recently the keyboard on my Droid 3 has been misbehaving. I finally took a little bit of time to clean it out with some alcohol and compressed air. Works like a charm!

Of course, then I took a little time to play with voice recognition. I may not use the keyboard again. I did this entire post using voice recognition and did not touch the keyboard other than to make a few punctuation corrections.   I also used the new word press Android app — it’s a little buggy, but seems to work okay for the most part.

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On the home stretch!

After a week or so of work, we’re getting a lot closer to being finished with the big jobs in the garage.   The floor is looking pretty good; we still have the last section to do but that should only take a day.   Lisa will be the first to get to park on the new floor this afternoon when she gets home from work.

The epoxy paint seems pretty tough!   I slid the deep freeze across the floor to get it back where it belongs.   It’s usually a pretty big PITA to move around, because there are no slides or even feet on the bottom – just bumps in the sheet metal on the bottom.   It left a trail of light gray that just wiped -ff — I think it was just concrete dust from previous moves, maybe with a little appliance paint.   No damage to the floor, other than knocking off a few of the decorative flakes.   After a quick swipe with a damp rag, you can’t tell where the drag marks were.   I don’t know if I mentioned it in my previous posts, but after MUCH research I decided to just go with the Rust-Oleum epoxy garage floor paint.   It was readily available (Home Depot had it on the shelf) and not as expensive as the other options I was looking at — which means, if it starts coming up in a few years I haven’t spent $2500 on the floor like one of my neighbors.   Yes, his does look better and he had other people do the work…   but hey, I’ll spend some time and effort to move a decimal point!   I figure I have spent well under $400 on this, including the grinder rental and painting supplies.

I wanted to have a utility sink installed, but the quote from the plumber to do just the bare minimum work so I could do all of the actual installation and drywall work…   well, it was simply insane.   I guess we’ll run a hose from the laundry room when we need water out there.

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Why, yes… this IS my first rodeo!

Lisa and I took Lauren, Holly and Burke to the River City Roundup rodeo last night.   It was the first time any of us had been to a real rodeo…   a good time was had by all!   The two little ones got cowboy hats.   We saw the animals in their pens for 4H judging; the little ones were pretty jazzed to get to see and touch the sheep, goats, and cows.   They also got to see some pigs (mainly tiny little piglets) and barnyard fowl — ducks, a goose, chickens and a rooster.     I didn’t get many pictures because riding herd on the kids kept us hopping.   They enjoyed the rodeo events, as did Lisa and I.   It’s pretty fast paced, not much time to get bored waiting for the next event!   I think the two little ones will be naturals for mutton busting in a few years.   That was hilarious, and it looked like the kids were having a blast!   On the way out, Lauren pulled a loose tooth — another first for her, she’s never pulled one of her own before.