I'll offer my shipping procedures and practices, maybe it will give you a few ideas.
First off, establish an account with the carrier you intend to use, I wouldn't use drop off locations.
I'd go with either Airborne or FedEx, I use Airborne myself, but the choice is yours. The difference being Airborne does, according to their own terms and conditions allow some reptile shipments. It's only chelonians and amphibians, but they do allow them. This may make it somewhat easier to deal with them as a company.
The point being, with an account, they pick up at your door. With this situation you won't have any problems with labeling. I mark all my packages on the airbill with live harmless reptiles and the latin name for the species. I have yet to encounter any problems.
In my opinion a contributing factor is that the drivers are on a schedule and really do not care what you are shipping, and once it's in the system there's no problems. At drop off counters though, you are much more likely to be denied shipping services for reptiles.
For the packaging, I make my own shipping boxes. I do this primarily because of one of Airborne's nuances about the method they calculate shipping. They use one of two methods, whichever is in their best interest, either actual weight or dimensional weight. They take the cubic inches of the box and divide by I believe 190 to get the dimensional weight. If this is higher than the actual weight, that is what they charge.
This means you can ship a standard reptile shipping box containing a feather or 5 or 6 pounds of rocks for the same money.
I make my boxes as small as possible while ensuring the safety of the animal, because with shipping herps, you will nearly always get billed the dimensional weight.
I use discarded boxes of the appropriate size, and line them with styrofoam blue board, an insulation material found at most building supply places. I use either the 3/4" or the 1" thickness for the best insulation.
For small herps, hatchling snakes etc, I place them in deli cups. It's important to remember to tape the lid down. These lids can and will come off and you don't want the animal escaping during shipping. For adult snakes or larger lizards, I use bags.
I place the container in the box and fill around it very well with either newspaper or styrofoam peanuts. The idea is to allow as little movement of the container as possible. With animals in bags, don't pach it so tightly as to make the animal uncomfortable, but with deli cups, I pack it fairly tightly to avoid as much bouncing as possible.
When necessary I use heat packs I get from
RLD Enterprises .
They sell both 35 and 60 hour packs.
I like to wrap the packs in a single layer of newspaper and tape them down to the inside of the package to avoid them coming in direct contact with the animal.
As for cool packs, I'd like to get some ideas of what others use as well. I've only used the reusable freezer packs like you would use in a cooler to take lunch to work.
I do the vast majority of my shipping in the fall though, and cool packs are usually not a concern.
Shipping is a nerve wracking process for anyone who cares both about the animals and the satisfaction of the person buying them. I know I track the packages much more often than the person receiving them, and it's always in the back of my mind until they let me know they arrived safely.
I suppose this may be different if I shipped a dozen boxes a week, but I do not.
To date, using the procedures I have outlined, I have never lost an animal during shipping or ever had a complaint about the condition in which an animal arrived. It may be more work fo rme than other methods of packing and shipping, but I know I've done my best to ensure safe delivery.
