Does anyone have a clue as to what shipping company we’re going to go through this year? We’re trying to put together a budget and thats some $$$ to consider. DO we get free shipping to the first regional and nationals? Or maybe 2 regionals? 
:yikes:
I always thought it was the first regional only. then the second and Nats were up to us. I have no idea as for this year. I don’t think this year’s shipping information has been revealed yet. We’ll see! =)
Last year with your kit of parts, teams received three prepaid FedEx waybills. These prepaid shipments could be used for one regional, the championship event and for one shipment home (either after the Championship or after a regional). Teams are not allowed use a prepaid shipment for a second regional, in lieu of the championship.
Any additonal shipments which were not done through the donated FedEx service had to be made via Midwest Conference Services.
For the full details on last season’s shipping rules, please refer to this document.
http://www2.usfirst.org/2004comp/11-RobotTransportation-RevB-incorporated.pdf
Remember though, these are last year’s rules. There is no guarantee that things will remain the same. Make sure you plan your budget accordingly.
Our team and others have had nothing but trouble with MCS. Account for an extra $200-$400 in your budget if you have to use them, cuz they hit us for being “overweight” big time, even when FedEx weighed our crate (with nothing but the robot in it, with batteries and controls) at 280 lbs.
Maybe we just have terrible luck… this is the second year they’ve done it to us though, and I’ve heard of other teams having problems too
We plan on $800.00 in our budget because of past experience with MCS. Most of the time when you have a problem with MCS they do try to resolve it at the event. The problem is that your weight and MSC’s weight are usually very different.
“Resolve” involved charging us $600 and threatening not to send the crate to our next regional.
I could see having an issue if I went and weighed my crate on some random scale, and then it came out that they weighed it as more. That’s fine.
Something tells me that FedEx is going to weigh your crate fairly accurately though… I mean, they’ve been doing this for how many years?
280 and 400+ lbs is a MASSIVE difference. Im not sure I would go as far as to say that they’re purposely trying to screw people out of their money, but the amount of fees we got hit with was ridiculous