I know I’ve talked about saving on shipping costs before but this section needs to be revisited. Back in the day, racers would scour the classifieds and junk yards looking for bodies to put on their car each year. It is a LOT of work, cutting it off and gutting it so you don’t have all that unnecessary weight, hanging it just right, but it was what you did, if you needed or wanted a fresh body on your car. Some racers still do this, some tracks still only allow the stock bodies in some classes and for all those people still doing all that work, God bless you, you deserve a celebratory adult beverage or two! As the years have gone by though, rules are changing, just like everything else, and racers are making lightweight aluminum bodies from sheets of aluminum or ordering aftermarket bodies from numerous race body suppliers out there. Even if you aren’t buying quarters, fenders, or a roof, chances are you’re at least buying a nose, tail, or hood and man, that can be PRETTY expensive once you add it all to your cart!

I am a HARD couponer and deal finder. I won’t even attempt to pretend otherwise, we are a self-made race team and when MyRacer and I got together, I wasn’t even working, I was in high school, then college, it was tough making MyRacer’s dollars stretch so he could race and get parts or fix his car when needed. We were in the thick of it, stripping down junk cars for body panels and parts, bondo to join the roof and quarters seamlessly or fix a body imperfection, gut all the panels with your reciprocating saw, like I said, a lot of work, and we did it. MANY times. Cut to recent years, as the rules have opened up, we started squirreling away a little here and there so we could join the “aftermarket movement”. Honestly, it wasn’t looking good, those things are super nice but were way out of price range, so we started with pieces. We started buying nose and tail pieces first, they were the most affordable of the bunch. Then MyRacer searched the classifieds for people selling aftermarket body parts… he hit pay dirt!

MyRacer’s love of the look and ease of the aftermarket body began with a 30 minute trip up the line to buy some used body parts, and we’ve never looked back. The downfall of this new love though, is that you can’t count on used parts within your reach. Sure, there are always a bunch for sale on the classifieds but will they hang correctly on your frame? Are they in rough shape? So you have to start entertaining the possibility of buying new body panels, making your own body panels from sheet metal, if you have the right equipment to break and bend it, or paying a shop to make them for you. Here is where we run into that high cost again. MyRacer went to countless racing websites adding body panels to his cart and going through to the checkout, only to be flabbergasted by the shipping costs. Body panels are large, oversize items, and businesses charge a hefty fee to ship them to you. In most cases, the cost to ship just a hood, was more than the hood itself, we’re talking HUNDREDS of dollars, per piece! Seriously, you would swear we were shipping an actual human body with the need of preservation or something it’s crazy! Luckily, MyRacer recently found a skillful way to save a TON.

I always mention how active MyRacer is on the internet. He is constantly on the classified sites, posting on forums and social media, and just generally trolling Facebook posts of the many, many racing groups he’s joined. He had posted he was looking for an aftermarket hood with reasonable shipping cost. It didn’t take long for a business out in the Midwest to respond with a simple “Call us”, and contact information. The deal was this, if he had a business that they could deliver to, the shipping cost would go down greatly. Also, the business charged a flat fee for over-sized item when shipping to a business, no matter how many he ordered. The wheels started turning in MyRacer’s head, who else in his racing community might need body panels? They could ship the panels to his work and split the flat shipping fee, giving each of them a sweet deal on shipping costs. He sent out a few texts and within a few hours, he had two other racers in need of hoods who would gladly go in on this deal. MyRacer is lucky that his boss has no issue with him having items delivered to the business. If you’ve got a decent relationship with your employer or even a friend who owns a business, give them a holler, the worst they can say is no. While the shipping was still $80 per person, it was way better than paying $240 by himself, again more than the cost of the hood, or more if he was shipping it to our house. So the next time those costly shipping quotes are bringing you down, reach out on social media for alternative businesses that might not show up on Google, see if you can cut the shipping by delivering to a business address, and don’t forget your fellow racers who might be in the same boat as you and would love to save some cash by going in on a bulk order! Do you have another way to save on shipping large, over-size items? Sound off in the comments about how you saved, help a racer out!