The fractional cost of a single phone cover on a container ship crossing the pacific is... extremely low. Large container ships hold 14,000 TEU (twenty-foot-eq

The fractional cost of a single phone cover on a container ship crossing the pacific is... extremely low. Large container ships hold 14,000 TEU (twenty-foot-equiv) containers, each of which has a volume of 33m^3. Let's use an iPhone's size as a stand-in for the phone cover: it's 173 x 70 x 8mm. Divide the first by the latter: (14000 * 33m^3) / (143mm * 71mm 8mm), and, as google will helpfully tell us (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk019-22DbqgT-dvyea4z64BPRXGL6w%3A1593416523827&ei=S5v5XrOLMs3UsAeFrIX4DA&q=%2814000+*+33m%5E3%29+%2F+%28143mm+*+71mm+*8mm%29&oq=%2814000+*+33m%5E3%29+%2F+%28143mm+*+71mm+*8mm%29&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoECAAQRzoICCEQFhAdEB5QwC5Y_8gBYPXdAWgAcAF4AIABbogB9w-SAQQyMy4ymAEAoAECoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjz3IaPw6bqAhVNKuwKHQVWAc8Q4dUDCAs&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe...) you can ship 5.6x10^9, or 5.6 billion of these on a single ship. From some related information it seems shipping rates for a single container are around $1,000 for China->US. Plug that in and the costs are ... $0.002, or 1/5th of a cent: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk03V0mVU96WhPcko_DiohGxB13fsBg%3A1593416975265&ei=D535XsjbD8-dsAeE7qroBw&q=%28%28143mm+*+71mm+*8mm%29+%2F+33m%5E3%29+*+%241000&oq=%28%28143mm+*+71mm+*8mm%29+%2F+33m%5E3%29+*+%241000&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoECAAQR1DJWViYuQFg9L0BaABwAXgAgAF1iAGbBJIBAzYuMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwiIn6jmxKbqAhXPDuwKHQS3Cn0Q4dUDCAs&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe... I may be off by an order of magnitude somewhere. But it just feels intuitively obvious that most of the costs of any delivery are incurred during the 15 seconds or so the mailman spends in your driveway or trying to find the mailbox with your name.