Shipping question

[quickie25]

Hello everyone,

I hope that this email finds everyone is having a blast of a build session, we sure are. We are a rookie team (#1380) and we need some professional advice on the February 24 shipping date. As the situation would have it, we are located practically around the corner from our regional competition site. Now we are well aware of the February 24 shipping deadline and are set be finsihed this week actually, but is there any rule that says that we have to ship our robot? We would like to deliver our bot personally to the event site on February 24 and save our valuable rookie budget for those all important replacement parts that we are bound to need. Please do not misunderstand that we intend to pass the 2-24-04 deadline, we just wanted to deliver the bot ourselves the 3 miles to the site on the deadline date.

Thanks in advance and good luck...

[Ricky Q.]

You can deliver your crate to the drayage warehouse for your regional, not your event site. See the Robot Transportation section of the manual for more details: http://www2.usfirst.org/2004comp/11-...sportation.pdf

[quickie25]

But that is just the point that we are trying to avoid, we are in the same town as our event and we are trying to avoid costly shipping expenses by transporting it ourselves.

[Kevin Sevcik]

You can't drop the robot off at the event.
Here are the relevant quotes:

11.2.8
You will be shipping your robot to a Drayage Company because event sites do not accept or store team robots, crates, or toolboxes. This company stores the robots and brings them to the event site.
11.2.8.2
ALL team crates must leave the team's hands by February 24, 2004, 5p.m. local time. This date and time applies whether you ship your crate(s) or drive it to the drayage facility.

I realize you're a rookie team and things are expensive, but the robot definitely has to be out of your hands on the 24th. That means it either has to be at the drayage company, or on its way there with a shipping company. The rules are the rules and they're there to make things fair for everyone and make the events run smoothly.

Please note, though, that if your crate is under 400 lbs and theres only one, then drayage charges are covered by FIRST, so you won't be paying anything. So delivering your robot to the drayage company would, atleast, save FedEx from having to ship your robot. You should have 3 complimentary FedEx airbills to ship your robot with as well, and if you're a rookie team, I expect you're only going to one regional and maybe the championship, so that should be plenty.

[quickie25]

Thats the part I wasnt aware of..so we are covered as far as shipping goes..unless we ship the whole team with the robot!!!

Thanks for your time...you have been very helpful...


good luck