The rate totally depends on three things.
1) Commercial or residential address to deliver to. Commercial is easily 15-25% less depending on the location. Residential has a fuel surcharge, residential delivery charge, etc that usually amounts $3-6 per box. Lately it seems every speaker I ship out is $24.78 or more, which is my cost after my whopping 12-15% volume discount. Yes, I'm losing money on the shipping fees.
2) Weight & size set the base rate charge, plus insurance, and the costs above. Ground is cheapest, and you can save some fees if you can ship to a Fedex Office, Walgreens, etc since it's a commercial address.
3) Go to the Fedex World Trade Center near you to ship packages, it's a lot less. Fedex affiliates, like PO Box businesses or Fedex authorized shipping outlets will charge you for the base rate, plus a 40-45% markup for time, plus the packing materials.
Case in point, I just had a guitar shipped from Minnesota to California. I did the math on having Fedex Office pack it ($20 box, plus labor/bubble wrap, etc) and ship it. $129 total.
If I sent them a label, my cost was $79 (Fedex Ground, insured for $800). The box was $20, labor was $20, so roughly $120. There was no point arguing over the $10 difference in cost, but unless you do it yourself, drop it off at a Fedex World Trade Center and do the paperwork there, you're going to pay a premium fee to have them handle it at an affiliated office/store.
