FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

What shipping do you use for shipping plants? What size boxes do you use? and what is the price of shipping that size of box? I have been looking at USPS and their box selection.

Most people use USPS priority 2-3 day, it's generally the least expensive with a flat rate box being under $9. First class in a small box can be around $4, but can take 5 days or more. Not too great for the plant. Plus, with the announced slowdown by the USPS, there could be more delays and other issues that would be detrimental to the plant.
Some are turning to UPS. It's more expensive, about 75% more on average, but more reliable.

Also is it nescessary to have a phytosanitary certificate?

I tend to hang onto any small to moderately sized box and use whatever I have on hand to ship plants. Just use whatever size comfortably fits the plants. First class or priority depending on what the buyer wants to pay for, or in the case of trades I'll make my own judgement. With the recent slowdowns though, I'll probably stick to priority mail for a while.

USPS has various sizes of free boxes (priority mail only) you can get if you don't have any on hand though. Besides the small flat rate which isn't large enough for a lot of plants, there's a 7x7x6 box that's commonly used and other larger sizes. You can order them from the USPS web store and they'll be delivered to your house, though it can take a while.

I use USPS Priority Regional boxes. They are cheaper than regular flat rate and they are bigger. The catch is that you have to order the boxes online and have them delivered. But that is free. You also have to print the labels online. You can't take them to the post office and have them create the postage.

I also make use of the different priority mail size boxes. Small flat rate I usually use for small plants or pinguicula in the cups. Most of the time I try to do 7x7x6 if it's potted or there are several plants. Depends on the weight of the package too. When doing first class, I've even turned Amazon boxes inside out and sent them that way.

However if you're doing First Class or by weight, you also need to factor your zone. For instance, you're in California and I'm in Florida. I believe it's Zone 9. It'd cost more to ship to me than to say Nevada and they go up exponentially, it's quite annoying. If you keep the package under I think 8-9 oz. shipping is around $5.50 but that's hard to do. I only know that because I sent something to Oregon about a week ago. Most of the time I use flat rate for that distance when doing Priority. Something to think about

Ok ill keep that in mind when i send you plants

Flat-rate "holiday" pricing from USPS:

Small Box
Inside: 8 5/8″ x 5 3/8″ x 1 5/8″
$9.20 at Post Office & Online

Medium Box
Top-loading - Inside: 11″ x 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″
Side-loading - Inside: 13 5/8″ x 11 7/8″ x 3 3/8″
$16.25 at Post Office & Online

Large Box
Inside: 12″ x 12″ x 5 1/2″
$22.65 at Post Office & Online

Panman wrote:You also have to print the labels online. You can't take them to the post office and have them create the postage.

You should do that anyway if you can, it's cheaper. Purchasing postage through any third party service (I've recently started using Pirateship which is excellent) gets you a postage discount typically in the 10-20% range. You just need to have access to a printer. You can get self-adhesive labels that come 2 to a sheet to print them on too, makes it a breeze.

It is purchased on the USPS website and I'd much cheaper than the regular Flat Rate boxes.

I found an online price calculator, and my parcel should cost about $9.55. I packaged everything in paper, and filled extra space with more paper and styrofoam.