How The Ridiculous Cost Of Shipping A Trailer Hitch Led Me Down A Strange Rabbit Hole Involving Pigeons

Over a year ago I managed to procure a hyper-rare Jeep Grand Cherokee spare tire carrier, and then — through some divine miracle — I stumbled upon another one at a junkyard shortly thereafter. As I was unable to allow that hyper-rare piece to be junked, and because I knew someone who might want it, I spent an hour unbolting the second tire carrier from the Jeep. Now I’m finally getting around to shipping the heavy part, and it has been difficult. And weird.

I have to be completely honest with you: I’m not even entirely sure this is worthy of a blog, but like I mentioned earlier today in my piece about the non-sale of my 1954 Willys Jeep, we need blogs and we need them now! So allow me to tell you about my struggle shipping the hyper-rare Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ spare tire carrier, and how it got seriously weird.

Before I moved away from Detroit, I sold my borderline mint-condition Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ five-speed to a gentleman in Texas who then spent the following month making it literally the most perfect ZJ on earth. It’s got the rare center console-delete that was only available on base-model ZJs, it’s got the Euro-only amber turn signals, and I could go on and on. The thing looks amazing. For a ZJ enthusiast like him, the spare tire carrier is considered the Holy Grail of accessories, so naturally when I found the one in the junkyard I reached out to this guy, who told me he’d pay for shipping.

 

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I split the hitch-receiver part from the actual tire-carrying part to yield two, roughly 50-pound, reasonably (ish) sized pieces that I could pack into boxes. I started by wrapping the hitch receiver in a moving blanket:

Then I made possibly the worst box in human history out of a bunch of little boxes:

I then drove this C-shaped box to a UPS store, where it was immediately and firmly rejected:

I wasn’t out of luck, though, because the UPS clerk offered to “telescope” two large boxes to create an even larger box that could fit my hitch. “Great!” I replied before setting the hitch on the scale, which read 56 pounds. “Nice, that’s actually not so heavy,” I thought to myself. I figured it’d cost $100, maybe $200 to ship the hitch receiver.

I figured wrong.

The quote came out to $458 plus packaging, which would bring the total to over $500! And that’s only half of the spare tire carrier! I messaged the gentleman in Texas to tell him the bad news that it’d cost over $1000 to get him the rare Jeep part; he told me to try FedEx, though I don’t think that’s going to be much cheaper.

So I took to Twitter to see if anyone had any better ideas on how to mail this freight. Quite a few people suggested Greyhound, though that company’s freight shipping option is no longer available.

Someone named Tom S suggested Pigeon. I figured he was referring to some kind of freight company, so I googled it and — though I later realized he meant Pigeon Freight Services — what I initially found in my search is that link above: Pigeons.biz.

This took me to something I could not possibly have fathomed exists — a 56,000 member-strong pigeon message board/forum “dedicated to pigeon owners and enthusiasts”:

Right away, I want to make clear: Nobody in my position can make fun of anyone for being enthusiastic about anything. I do not shame hobbies; I mean, just look at me a few years ago:

But now that I’ve self-deprecated a bit, can we at least look at a few of the posts on this forum? I’m just curious.

The “Dark green sticky poop” post is about someone concerned about the color of a pigeon they just found. Actually giving a damn about the wellbeing of a pigeon is something I can get behind; respect! The “Pigeon bully” post you see above is about someone having trouble keeping one of their pigeons from pecking at the others. I also found a thread titled “Pigeon Bath” in which the poster asks for ways to remove mites with a fluid that is safe for the birds to drink should they decide to do so.

Honestly, a lot of this forum — which, again, I’m a little baffled even exists — is pretty wholesome. Pigeons are, in many folks’ eyes, at the very bottom of the foodchain. They are cigarette butt-eating, shoulder-pooping, french fry-stealing pests. But to these folks, they are worthy of love, as all living thing should be (aside from, perhaps, mosquitos). Here’s a reply talking about using tobacco to keep bugs away:

You can also buy some tobacco stems for their nest boxes and this helps to repel bugs and they carry the stem around the loft so proud looking for the females to add to the nest. Pigeon supply places usually have them and they can be shipped to you a nice size box…I use them from Foys Pigeon Supply out of PA..

What the hell, there’s a Pigeon Supply store? Here’s another reply in the “Pigeon Bath” thread:

I would use a good pigeon cleanser and one I suggest would be Racing Pigeon Cleanser. It gently removes all feather mites and lice.

What the heck? There’s a thing called a Pigeon Cleanser? And what’s this “racing” word here?

I looked at my Twitter again and saw Tom S’s reply:

I then followed the link to “Strombergschickens.com,” and what I found blew me away:

There’s an Amazon Marketplace equivalent for racing pigeons! You can buy these things just like you’d buy a pair of socks or reading glasses! If you’re curious about the “Product Details” of “Blue Bar Saddle Janssen Racing Homer Pigeons,” here it is:

Fast, quick maturing, & reliable racing homer of a light bluish gray color w/2 black bars across the back part of the top surface of the wing. (blue bar) Well conditioned birds. Can fly 400-500 miles. Jansen’s originated in Europe, Germany/Belgium.

• Availability: Pair, Male, or Female

400 to 500 miles of range! These things are the Lucid Airs of the bird world!

Unfortunately, though pigeons are technical vehicles often used to transport messages (which is how I can sorta justify writing about them on a car website), their payload capacity is simply too low to transport my Jeep Grand Cherokee spare tire carrier. It seems a carrier pigeon can cary 2.5 ounces, so I’d need roughly six to carry a single pound. With the hitch alone weighing 56 pounds, and the tire carrier side probably bringing the total weight to 100 pounds, I’d need at least 600 birds. And at $135 a pair (for the cheap pigeons), that’s over $40,000 in pigeons to transport a trailer hitch. That’s not even accounting for the fact that the 1,400 mile journey from LA to Austin would require multiple stops for rest/food/water.

Anyway, pigeons ain’t the answer. But neither is UPS. So if you have any other ideas, please do let me know. Maybe the business named Pigeon could work? Surely it’ll be cheaper and involve a lot less poop.