HELP shipping a turtle

Most turtles are shipped Express (Next Day) by DHL (formerly Airborne Express). Keep checking around your local DHL terminals until you find someone who will help you. They never give out local terminal phone numbers, so you almost have to go in in person to a local counter to make sure they will accept turtles without any problems. Calling the national 800 number usually results in being told they don’t accept live shipments. Airborne had an official corporate turtle policy that sometimes needed to be shown to local terminals to get them to accept turtles. If that would help you, someone posted the name and policy number of that Airborne document to this group a couple of years ago and it should be buried in the archives. Hopefully DHL is not changing the policy. The best thing to do is to talk to anyone else who ships turtles from your local area (other hobbyists, pet shop, dealers, ???) and find out what specific terminal they ship out of so you can deal with turtle-friendly staff. You might need to drive a little distance to find a cooperative terminal. I am close enough to a major hub terminal that I can drop off and pick up all live packages at the terminal. I know things get much more complicated the farther out you are from a major terminal. Only shipping turtles by “ground” service is a new one and makes no sense. Usually they just say they don’t accept live shipments, until you get to someone who will listen. Second Day service works for adult turtles during cool (not cold) spring and fall months, but it is getting a little too far into the warm months for me to be comfortable with even Second Day this time of year (especially going into the south such as Florida). I don’t understand why Turtle Homes would recommend US Mail. USPS regulations strictly prohibit turtles from being shipped. A lot of people do it anyway, but they are risking the turtles getting caught up in a postal enforcement action (as well as themselves). UPS is also being used by a couple of the major dealers I know. Some shippers prefer it to DHL/Airborne. My experience has been either very good or very bad with each of these services depending on the shipping from and ship to locations. It just depends on where in the system you are trying to work, unfortunately. But UPS would be your other simplest option for Next Day. I’ve heard of turtles going FedEX, but I’ve also heard FedEx doesn’t accept live shipments. Anyone have experience with FedEx? Delta Dash has a minimum charge and fairly strict packaging requirements. Drop off and pick up has to be done at a major airport per their time schedules. It would be an expensive option for just two turtles. You should be able to find basic info. somewhere on the Delta websites and then you would have to call your local Delta terminal to arrange the specifics. Southwest Airlines has very reasonable same-day shipping, but you must be a registered shipper through the federal regulators to be allowed to use their service, so it won’t work for private individuals. Anyone else having problems with DHL after the Airborne take-over? Toddploy22@… wrote: