I worked at FedEx for 10months. And the trucks i loaded constantly delivered to pet-stores, and a lot of times reptiles and fish would come through to home delivery.
The amount of packages ive seen thrown, tossed, kicked, flung etc that had the "warning live animals" was disturbing
Exactly why I use polyester pillow fill instead of newspaper for packing. It provides a much softer landing if the box is dropped. Plus you can pack the snake into the middle of it much tighter and it's like being in the middle of a pillow.
my first spider that i ordered was from NY and when it got to my house, i saw the fedex guy tumbling it and twirling it like it was a damm basketball...wonder if thats what caused it to get the "stargazing".
I typically pay between $35 and $65 for my overnight shipments on my fedex account. The west coast shipments are the most and stuff close to FL or in FL is around $35. I use either 12 x 9 x 6 or 7 x 7 x 6 inch boxes for pretty much everything. I am definitely not a high volume shipper. I maybe ship 20-30 packages a year.