I have several friends that I don't normally send gifts to, because they live so far away. I have never sent anything through the mail but regular mail.

How would I go about shipping a package?

Do I need to find a box..etc?

I would start by looking in your local Yellow Pages for mailing centers. These are businesses that ship packages. They will supply the box, packing material, and anything else you might need. It can be a bit pricey, like everything else these days.

I always keep shipping paper, tape, and labels at home, and when I need to ship something, I get a box, package it, and send it through the postal service. If it's really big boxes, you'll need another service like UPS. It is very expensive like Jelp said.

If you want to ship throught the post office, you have several options. You can ship parcel post, which is slightly cheaper and takes slightly longer than other methods (but still typically under a week).

The next step up is prority. If you do this, they have free labels packages of a few different sizes at the post office. For items over a pound or two, priority isn't much more expensive than parcel post (and gets there in 3-5 days, typically). For light items, the price difference is larger (shipping times are the same).

You can also overnight it, but I can't see a reason, if you're thinking about it over a week from the day it has to arrive, thaqt you should do this because it is significantly more expensive.

For anything less than priority, you should probably provide your own tape, but they will add tape if they feel it is not sufficiently taped.

Of course, FedEx and UPS are other good options, I just don't know the details of them, but I'm sure you can find them on their web site or by callign them.

Hey guys thanks for the help! I decided to go through the postal services, (the post office is a few blocks away, while UPS is about 10 miles).

My mom happened to be in the post office at the same time, so I got some input from her too, and decided to go with priority mail. It was less than a dollar more, but could guarentee it would arrive in time for christmas.

Thanks for all your help!