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My wife and I moved our stuff across Canada -- from Alberta to Nova Scotia -- by mail. That's when I found out about the "monotainer," a giant palletized wire b

My wife and I moved our stuff across Canada -- from Alberta to Nova Scotia -- by mail. That's when I found out about the "monotainer," a giant palletized wire box that they fill with items heading to a common destination. Our boxes all went in a monotainer and made it to Halifax before we did. The nicest part: Canada Post moved us in! Everything was waiting in our new apartment when we arrived.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago
You used to be able to ship via Amtrak, but they suspended the service. You could basically send up to a 500lbs pallet. You could also ship a bicycle, or a dead body. All three required correct packaging. A bunch of us used the service to ship cheap PCs and CRT monitors up to New York for HOPE one year. The shipping cost more than the computers, but it wasn't much (a couple hundred bucks). Public Terminal Cluster was a huge success. Afterward we didn't want to ship them back home, so we gave away two pallets worth of old computer gear to whoever passed by on 33rd St. Took about an hour.
- chneu 1y ago
  Greyhound still kinda does this. I think they're phasing it out, or they already did. Basically if you could put it in a box and it would fit under their bus they would ship it to anywhere on their route.
  - notatoad 1y ago
    i grew up in rural canada and we used this all the time. it didn't even have to be in a box - if you could convince the driver to let you put it on the bus, you could ship it. and as long as it was going to another stop on the same bus route you could load it onto the bus yourself and the person you were shipping it to could take it off the bus, so there was no worrying about how the shippers were going to treat your stuff. it was almost as good a service as having a friend with a truck that was going that way. but sadly, no more greyhound in canada.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    Buddy bought a new (to him) car door off ebay this way.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

You used to be able to ship via Amtrak, but they suspended the service. You could basically send up to a 500lbs pallet. You could also ship a bicycle, or a dead body. All three required correct packaging. A bunch of us used the service to ship cheap PCs and CRT monitors up to New York for HOPE one year. The shipping cost more than the computers, but it wasn't much (a couple hundred bucks). Public Terminal Cluster was a huge success. Afterward we didn't want to ship them back home, so we gave away two pallets worth of old computer gear to whoever passed by on 33rd St. Took about an hour.

chneu 1y ago
Greyhound still kinda does this. I think they're phasing it out, or they already did. Basically if you could put it in a box and it would fit under their bus they would ship it to anywhere on their route.
- notatoad 1y ago
  i grew up in rural canada and we used this all the time. it didn't even have to be in a box - if you could convince the driver to let you put it on the bus, you could ship it. and as long as it was going to another stop on the same bus route you could load it onto the bus yourself and the person you were shipping it to could take it off the bus, so there was no worrying about how the shippers were going to treat your stuff. it was almost as good a service as having a friend with a truck that was going that way. but sadly, no more greyhound in canada.
- timschmidt 1y ago
  Buddy bought a new (to him) car door off ebay this way.