Shipping Big Things

Our current gas grill is on its last legs. I’ve rebuilt the inside of it a couple times, but now some of the places where I’d attached new "grill guts" are so rusted, it’s time to put it out to pasture. It has lived a good live and provided my family with grilled meat goodness for many years.  Besides, there is a natural gas hookup right on our patio, so we decided in was time to invest in a new grill and ditch the LP tanks.

I didn’t do a ton of research, I knew I’d wanted a Weber gas grill for a while now. Everyone I know that has had one doesn’t even think about how long it has lasted, they just keep on going. We ended up deciding to get the Summit S-650.  It wasn’t exactly cheap, but it offered a larger cooking surface.  Our last grill was pretty small, which made made grilling for more than say 4-5 hard. It also has a rotisserie built in which we could see using.

No one in town stocked the natural gas version of the grill – one appliance store had it in a warehouse down in Chicago, but we still were stuck ordering it, so I looked online.  I found it through a company in Pennsylvania call RAC Enterprise.  They got high marks on most of the shopping review sites I checked and they had it in stock with free shipping for several hundred bucks less than anywhere else. Normally I would pay a bit more to shop locally, but in this case, the appliance store was a chain not headquartered here.

Here is where I get to my point.  The grill in its package weighs a little short of 300lbs. You don’t really ship that via the postal service or UPS.  RAC shipped it via FexEx’s LTL service (LTL stands for less than truckload).  FedEx is really smart, since the fastest route from Pennsylvania to Milwaukee is evidentially through California:

I wouldn’t have thought that, but then again, I don’t work in logistics for a living. The grill was supposed to be delivered last Monday (8/18) but now it is anyone’s guess. RAC has been helpful, but they can only do so much. My ticket to seared meat perfection is in the hands of some truck driver out there on the interstates. If you’re out and about somewhere between Wisconsin and California and see a FedEx tractor trailer, let them pass.  They are running late enough as it is and daddy’s got steaks to cook.

UPDATE:  I contacted RAC to see if they had a number for FedEx LTL since there wasn’t one listed on the tracking page. I also pointed out FedEx’s choice of route, how they must know a shortcut or something. I didn’t get a response back from the generics "sales" or "info" address like usual, the president of the company, Rocco Ciavarella Jr, e-mailed me personally and said they are in contact with their account manager at FedEx to find out where exactly my grill is and why it got routed at the main Pennsylvania terminal to California. He also appreciated my humor in the situation.

Either way, I know RAC had nothing to do with it, they put the box on a truck and it’s up to FedEx to deliver it.  That said, RAC Enterprise is a class act.  So many other online stores just say, "contact the shipper" when they might as well say, "it’s not our fault" or worse "we don’t care". Not these guys.