Has anyone had any dealings with Mcmaster Carr? I’d love to order some angle iron for a brew-stand build but they don’t list shipping charges anywhere. There are a lot of places that ‘pad’ shipping and I don’t wanna find out the hard way. I tried e-mailing them but I’ve gotten no response. Thanks
I order from McMaster 5 days a week; many many items. I don’t deal with shipping because it is charged to the corporate UPS account. I deal with their customer service often and find them very responsive. try giving them a call.
It has been awhile since I have ordered personal items but IIRC you can fill out the shopping cart online and you can see your items including the shipping charges before you commit. Try filling the order online but don’t commit the order.
Thanks for the quick response. I actually tried your second suggestion but it still didn’t list the shipping charges. I got all the way thru the order process and all I had to do was hit ‘place order’. I’ll try giving them a call.
Have you tried a local welding or metal fab shop? Having angle iron shipped to you is not really economical. You’re better off to pick it up yourself.
I have a little but I haven’t seen anything nearby that compares to the slotted angle iron they offer. I may have to adjust my idea a bit.
The slotted stuff is more of a specialty item and may have to be ordered. I thought you were talking about standard angle iron.
I’ve ordered o-rings from them and found the shipping charges were reasonable. Big difference between o-rings and angle iron though.
They certainly don’t pad their shipping charges, although angle iron is heavy stuff, so who knows. They ship out of Elmhurst, IL if I recall correctly, so to Indianapolis may not be too bad. They’re extremely fast as well, so I like to deal with them. I would suggest giving them a call if you haven’t heard back via e-mail. I never see the shipping charges until after my order is shipped, and that’s on personal items.
In my experience their shipping is fair, and reflects actual UPS cost to them.
IMO I would just to your local steel supplier, they’ll have exactly what you need and no shipping charges, especially if you’re doing a rbew stand you’ll need upwards of 50’
This doesn’t really address the question on shipping, but this thing is pretty rad! (about halfway down the page)
That’s very similar to an idea I saw on a forum that was a couple of years old. I think the guy named it Wallace. Very cool what creative minds can come up with!
I’ve ordered from them in the morning and had delivery the same day. Of course, I’m in Chicago, so I’m close.
The shipping charges have never been outrageous, but like Tom I’m typically ordering o-rings or small parts like schraeder valves.
I’ll always order a few extra just to amortize the shipping charges and cuz I just always order extra and have parts everywhere.
Also, I believe that whatever they quote on shipping will get adjusted to actual shipping charges when they bill you. I’ve never seen it be a big difference, but it’s different.
McMaster is geared towards commercial/industrial customers, who favor speed over the (relatively) small price of shipping.
I’ve ordered brewing stuff (copper tubing, water filter, compression fittings) from McMaster and found their shipping prices reasonable. Given the size and extent of their business I think you can trust McMaster to have fair shipping charges, simply because mail-order is their business and customers ultimately won’t tolerate out-sized shipping charges.
However since speed is their focus and their normal customers aren’t that sensitive to shipping charges, you can expect some loose shipping practices. I received the water filter and fittings in a box about 4x bigger than it needed to be, with some crumpled up butcher paper thrown in as padding. I order a lot of parts through McMaster for my job so this wasn’t a surprise. Sure the box could have been smaller and saved me a little on shipping, but to me the selection & availability make up for it. I spent an afternoon driving around trying to find the right fittings at hardware stores with no success.