A tonne of boules by Airmail

The second week of December we received a request from Left Bank, a chain of 5 restaurants around San Francisco: to deliver 500 sets of petanque boules, as Christmas gifts for their employees.
A wonderful idea!
Also very heavy: 1050 kg or 2300 lbs.

The challenge: they had to reach a week before Christmas, not on 1,000 lbs factory pallets as we receive them, because they don't have forklifts at their end, and - of course - the transport cost had to be reasonable.
For our overseas readers: Greensboro-San Francisco is exactly 3800 km, roughly the same as Paris-Baghdad.
We checked with several trucking companies: too slow, too complicated, or too expensive.

That's when we thought of the USPS flat rate Priority Mail boxes. "Whatever the weight, as long as it fits". It just meant we had to repackage them safely into little cartons (a bit bigger than a pizza box) and print lots and lots of labels.

They went out at a rate of 400 lbs per day and most boxes made it in 48 hrs, hand delivered to the various restaurants!
Hats off to the US Postal Service. And special thanks to Nolen, our mailman in Greensboro. Also to his colleagues in California who are probably still wondering what on earth was in those cartons.

Left Bank
(Larkspur, Menlo Park, Pleasant Hill, San Jose, San Mateo)
USPS Flat Rate Priority Mail boxes