I don't have a lot of experience with this other than we've shippid a couple of our baby Kingsnakes to a guy in MN & he recently sent us a Brooksi King back along with a CG....
From here in Florida, I called the place I was shipping them from & found out the latest time to drop them off (so not sitting on a hot truck all day) & then overnighted them to him by the earliest time available. I had 10:30am, noon & 5 pm to choose from. He knew they were coming & got them ASAP. I used Fed Ex & they were WONDERFUL.
However...when he sent us our Brooksi & CG, he used DHL (formally Airborne Express) with the critters to be delivered to us by 10:30am. They did NOT get here until 5pm & had sat on the hot truck all day. I was livid. DHL told me we had a "rural" zipcode so hense the late delivery, although they failed to tell the shipper this when he paid the extra $$$ to get the early delivery time. Do NOT use DHL & make sure you find out if 10:30am delivery is available BEFORE you send.
End of the story, our critters were OK, hot, but OK & I'll never use anyone but Fed Ex.
Keith had put them in deli cups with holes in them, packed them in a small box with newspaper & wrote "live reptiles" on the outside of the box. I didn't want to freak the drivers out so I wrote "perishable" on the outside instead.
You can call & give them the "to" & "from" zips & they'll tell you the price. From here in FL to MN was about $35-$40/overnight/early delivery.
Call.......your best bet. Oh, one more thing..."rural"???? We have 2 hospitals here, 7 schools, every store you could imagine & one mile from the major highweay that runs N-S thru FL. No dirt roads here DHL...Rural?
Grrrr to DHL.
