Dear Actual/Hypothetical Bonsai Seller

[berobinson82]

Peanuts aside; I enjoyed this laugh first thing this morning. Thanks for the rant. SMFP!

 

[JudyB]

Good for you Bob, I love those peanuts, they go straight to the compost. The other ones, I bag up and take to UPS to recycle...
I was very happy that with that big tree, the shipper put the large bag that the peanuts came in with the tree, so I didn't have to use 5 garbage bags just to recycle.

 

[Bob]

Geoff, what may have been a pain in the butt for you was a great source of laughter for me!

Love your writing style and thought process!

Bob

 

[Dwight]

I just received a tree shipped in a woden framed cardboard bok. The trree was secured to the woden frame via the pot and couldn't move. This was a relatively large tree , about 3' and had NO PACKING AT ALL ! Came through fine. Unpacking was a bit of a chore though. I imagine the shipper spent a couple of hours building this box.

I always open the box inside to see if it has peanuts. If it does out comes the shop vac and away go the peanuts. If the shop vac fills up before the box is empty I simply empty the vac into a large trash bag and go on vacuming. Really not much problem and the trees are fine.

 

[jkd2572]

The shop vac is genius. I have one and never thought of that. Thanks

 

[Bonsai Nut]

When I ship custom wood furniture I use expanding foam pillows and void space. The furniture CANNOT MOVE within the box (at all) or you're doomed. When shipping bonsai, at the minimum I would consider planting the pot in an expanding foam pillow in the bottom of the box so that it cannot shift in any direction.

 

[Zach Smith]

Hello, my name's Geoff. I sometimes order trees online when I can't find what I'm looking for at one of my local nurseries (which is rare). It's the magic of the Internet! You show what you have, I tell you that I'd like to buy it, I send you money, you send me a tiny little tree. Truly, we're lucky to live in the future.

And as such, I feel like we have lots of options at our fingertips. FUTURE options. Advanced techniques for shipment. The bulk of the (relatively few) trees that I have needed shipped to my place of residence have arrived intact and nicely contained with scant muss or fuss about the process. That changed today. And though my nice little Practice Cryptomeria (as I shall call it until I prove that I won't kill it) did indeed arrive healthy and in one piece, there was one issue. I'd like to take a minute to warn you in advance to avoid this practice - or stop dead in your tracks from doing it, if such might be the case - as it will most assuredly cause your customers to hate you with the burning fire of 10,000 suns. And never patronize you again.

Here we go:

Do not pack your trees in Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts.

You see, like many bonsai enthusiasts, my first instinct is not to open a plant inside my house, but outside. On my porch. In relative "nature". Where the tree belongs. And what happens when you use Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts, packed DENSELY into the cardboard box with the tree, is this: it gets everywhere. Because you open the box, and those awful little bastards just spill out. On a particularly unlucky day, like, say, oh, I don't know...today, you'll open your box unsuspecting at JUST the moment when the slightest gust of wind comes sweeping by, and BOOM. You've got Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts all over your porch, all over your previously uncontaminated bonsai, and all over yourself. Additionally, let's say you live on the third story of a building with a rather nice little communal garden just feet below. In that instance, Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts might be carried down into said garden - by wind AND gravity! - and, concurrently, you might be forced to later explain to a rather perturbed HOA why the once-pristine community garden is now quasi-blanketed in Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts.

Here's the thing: it's not like Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts are the only option available to you in the realm of bonsai-shipping. In fact, they're not even the most inexpensive or reliable, and they're CERTAINLY not the most user-friendly. So why use them? This is an important question I feel like you may not have asked yourself before. It's paramount that you start.

I hope this has been a helpful open letter. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to spend the next hour picking microscopic bits of Styrofoam Motherfucking Peanuts out of my otherwise lovely little Practice Cryptomeria.

Sincerely,

Geoff LaTulippe, Bonsai Enthusiast and Potential Sanitarium Resident

Styrofoam peanuts, though annoying, serve a couple of indispensable functions in the shipping process (I've shipped many hundreds of trees in the course of 25 years in the biz). First, they help keep trees cool (or warm) depending on what time of year you ship. I don't think either Fedex or UPS use climate control in their giant warehouses, and I know the holds of aircraft are not. So if you want your tree to arrive alive in summer or winter be thankful for Styrofoam. Second, they are a great lightweight means of cushioning trees inside of their travel containers. For some reason, the folks who move the boxes from Point A to Point B like to toss them around like footballs, and I've even had a box returned to me with a workboot footprint on it (on the smashed side). If you pack the tree securely with Styrofoam peanuts, you get a pretty tight and solid mass. (I made one mistake in 25 years, not packing a tree tight with Styrofoam peanuts. They turned the tree upside down, naturally, breaking off the top completely. If I'd only remembered the peanuts.)

I've tried starch peanuts, and they work okay until you get a leaker (they happen every now and them). Not a good result, as they melt away. I don't think excelsior would be a lot better, as it would annoy you probably as much as peanuts. So we're all more or less stuck.

I wish there was a better answer, but there's just not a better answer.

Zach

 

[daygan]

It's an excellent way but it'll add $50.00 or more to shipping costs.

It seems like it would be a nice thing to offer people the option between the excellent shipping method and the good (but cheaper) shipping method, and let them know the difference between the two. The recipient, of course, would pay for the extra shipping cost. Obviously, one would understand having to pay for the extra cost of the safer shipping method, and clearly it's not a subjective fee, but a fee based on materials and post office charging standards, so those who care about the extra safety enough would be okay with paying the extra fee. Also, offering the choice and the explanation of the difference would ensure that the recipient knows (if he chooses the cheaper method) that he will be receiving a box full of peanuts.