UPAKWESHIP measuring question

I am in CA at the moment and trying to decide if any of this crap stuff I have in storage is worth shipping home. I have a quote from UPAK and was wondering how much the pallet adds to the total size.

For those of you that had already estimated your cubic footage, how much were you "off" by?

Another question. Did anyone have any issues with books getting damp?

I can't be sure but I don't think they count the pallet as adding anything -- I may be wrong, but as far as I could tell, they just took my boxes as the final volume. I didn't get any notices about being over the limit, or have to pay extra...I think that when I was stacking the packed boxes, I did my own rough measurement of the cubic feet, and it must have been not too far from accurate, as I never heard anything from UPak at a later date, nor did their quoted price change (which was a relief).

As for books, funny, but those were the greater part of what I was shipping; everything was in the condition I sent it in -- the only thing that suffered any was an oil painting that I didn't pack properly and the paint slightly melted then reset. But this was a shipment leaving Houston TX in the height of the July 100 degree heat, ocean freighting through the Gulf of Mexico, so I@m not surprised something got heat stroke, lol. Other than that, all my stuff fared really well, including electronic items and musical instruments.

Thanks for that info! 

I am only doing 35 cu ft which is the minimum and really don't want to go too much over. The boxes I bought have turned out to be too big to pack reasonably, so I am now on to plan B (ie find better boxes ).

Back when M bags were still available, I read suggestions to wrap books in plastic bags to avoid them getting damp on the boat. I wonder what the conditions are like with these shipments. I ended up with mice in a few of my boxes during storage, so I am a bit paranoid about that too.

Yes, I used plastic bags, not sure if they were needed --  I saw no water stains or damage to the outside of the boxes. I don't know much about the conditions on these freight ships, but the pallets of small shipment such as yours will be and mine was, are I believe loaded into huge metal containers with other palletized shipments sharing the space, so there is weather protection basically.

None the less, I put my books into plastic bags first then packed them into boxes bought from Office Depot, meant to hold hanging file folders -- the little squarish kind you fold together and a little lid goes on the top. They are small enough that you can only get about 25 lbs of books in them, a reasonable weight per box (you want to pack heavy things in small boxes, light things can be in bigger ones).

They have hole-handles which made carrying easier for everyone, the delivery guy, me at the start, etc. Interestingly, I didn't find that anything had crawled into those holes, thank God...

I taped the lids tight with multiple windings of clear packing tape, all around the box as well as around the "seam". These strong little boxes did a fantastic job, I felt.

They have hole-handles which made carrying easier for everyone, the delivery guy, me at the start, etc. Interestingly, I didn't find that anything had crawled into those holes, thank God...

Oh, that's really useful information to have!  I was wondering if the boxes with hole handles were going to be a problem.