Shipping a PC

An Update:

I shipped to the PC across country and it arrived in good condition and the owner set it up without any problems.

It wasn't all luck. For anyone finding this thread:

• I removed the spinning hard drive and gave that to the owner, packed in it's original shipping box, to take back with her in her carry on.
• I then packed the rest of the assembled PC in the box the chassis/case came in. It had nice styrofoam packing.
• I got another heavy weight shipping box that was about 2 inches larger in width and depth, and about 12 inches taller than the chassis/case box.
• I cut and fit a scrap piece of 1 inch stiff foam board and placed that at the bottom of the bigger box.
• I placed the chassis/case box in the bottom of the bigger box, orientated so the rear output panel on the motherboard was facing down. (logic here was that any drop shock would be against the case frame, not in the unsupported direction looking at the video card and power supply.)
• I packed the chassis/case box from shifting by sliding 1 inch foam board strips at 4 corners.
• I then filled the top of the box with all the computer parts boxes and some shipping air bags.
• Most important: I cut some hand holds in the upper portion of the big box and reinforced these with cardboard and hot melt glue for strength. This accomplishes two things: it gives the workers a convenient way to carry and move the big box, and that insures that the box stays in the orientation I want. No one is going to work harder to move the box sideways!
• Taped it all up real good, placed the shipping label on the top of the box, and wrote "Fragile - Electronics" in normal size writing under the label. (Someone who once worked at UPS told me that they always place the boxes with the labels facing up while shipping)
• I also set the declared value at $1300. This cost $11 extra. But when I did this it changed everything. I got a notification that because of the declared value I could not drop the box off anywhere, not even a UPS Store (Which I did not realize were franchises). I had to bring the box to a UPS Service Center or give it to a driver and they had to sign a pre-printed form acknowledging receipt of the shipment. (Since you can't swing a cat around your head by it's tail without hitting a UPS truck around here, that was not a problem!)

So if anyone else cares to try this in the future, those are my recommendations!

Me too!