In the 80s and 90s, when shipping really heavy items, e.g., a Marshall 100W head + 1-2 2-12" cabs, my biz partner and I often shipped, station to station, via Greyhound. Yeah, the busline. This was actually fairly common practice among vintage instrument traders/dealers for years, and even as late (in my own experience) as circa 2002. And especially for heavy items, not so much for geetars, unless one was shipping, say, 3-4 as a single set. We'd even have shipping boxes (crates, really) crafted to hold the goods, and the geetars sent 2-day, sometimes next day, for considerable (shipping cost) sums. But then, when a fella shells out, say, $20,000 for a '57 Goldtop, what's another $500 for crating and next-day delivery? Y'know, we didn't have all the "online tracking" & "smartphone text updates" y'all got today, so if something did not arrive as expected, dang we'd be on the (landline) phones lickety-split, calling across the country to determine the location of the parcel. Had many a heart-thumpin', adrenaline-wracked moment @ those days, but dammit the goods came through. IIRC only had one piece, an old AR TT (NOS in original box) that arrived damaged; arrived on time, but damaged, and even that limited to the stylus portion of a very nice cartridge (that oughtta been separately packaged but...)
