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View Full Version : Costs, Maildrops vs. buying food along the way



Kryspy99
11-25-2004, 21:13
In general, which would be more costly as you travel on the AT trail? Having food mailed to you along the way (considering postage costs) or buying food at local grocery stores as you travel.
Thanks

smokymtnsteve
11-25-2004, 21:16
Depends on what you want to eat

Lone Wolf
11-25-2004, 21:17
Mail drops are more costly. More of a hassle.

Jack Tarlin
11-25-2004, 21:30
K---

Even if you buy a great deal of food in bulk, ahead of time, and even if you save a great deal of money in the process, this is generally crossed out by postage costs.

Also, a great many hikers have discovered that they get tired of a lot of the food in their maildrops, and in fact learn to HATE certain items. But if they've bought and boxed up all their food six months in advance, they're kinda stuck with it. What this means is that many folks either end up gagging down food they've come to despise, or they end up giving a lot of it away, and buying replacement items. This is like buying your food twice.

Also, buying stuff en route also gives you a chance to see what other folks are eating; you may well see stuff you hadn't planned on or even heard of, that you might want to try out after seeing other folks eating it. If you've bought all your food ahead of time, once again, you're essentially stuck with it.

In short, unless you have special dietary needs or restrictions (kosher, vegan, etc.) I think it's probably a better idea to get most of your food en route----you'd be surprised on how many places there are to do this. There are really only a handful of places on the Trail where decent store re-supply is either not present or inconveniently far away. (If you look the "Information" section of Whiteblaze, you'll find a couple of lengthy articles on shopping and re-supply that may help you).

But to answer your direct question, you probably won't save that much money by using maildrop re-supply. It is possible to eat BETTER by using maildrops (if you take the time to dehydrate tasty and healthy stuff beforehand....this can also save a lot of pack weight), but you'd still have to purchase this stuff beforehand, then take the time to prepare and dry it, box it up, and post it....in the long run, this'd probably cost as much or more than if you simply bought stuff in stores.

Different re-supply methods work for different people, but personally, I suggest that you use maildrops for food only when you really have to. This also means you won't have to devote a lot of time to keeping track of your maildrops, speeding up on the Trail in order to retrieve them, etc.
These days, there are a lot more places on or near the trail to get food, and better information available on where these places are to be found. This is the principal reason that most folks today choose to get most of their re-supplying done while en route, as opposed to having it mailed from home.

Lion King
12-06-2004, 12:32
I have said this a thousand times, and it is something I have used every time I have been out on the AT.

A envelope stuffed with traverlers checks only costs an average of 40 cents or so and you can buy what you need, get a full meal, shower laundry, hostel, whatever and not have to mail **** out, hope the stuff you had mailed isnt too late early, or not what you want. It saves the $20 plus dollars on a big ass box every other town stop, it saves you from eating bulk food, which you will find a pleathra of in hiker boxes, because people who did it the box sending way are in fact sick as hell of all the stuff they bought in bulk.

Its fast easy convienient and cheap.

You will find you save at least a few hundred dollars this way.

SalParadise
12-06-2004, 12:46
I bought a thru-hike workbook before I left for my hike that said the savings for mailing your food vs. buying it in town was roughly $350 for the whole trip. If you're mailing food for two people I'm sure that savings would be considerably higher.

Shrike
12-06-2004, 19:24
What book and when did it come out?

Footslogger
12-06-2004, 19:53
In general, which would be more costly as you travel on the AT trail? Having food mailed to you along the way (considering postage costs) or buying food at local grocery stores as you travel.
Thanks====================
True ...it depends a lot on what you eat. But I can tell you that the farther away you get from home (origin of your food boxes) the more expensive it becomes and the greater the likelihood that the box won't be there when you are.

There's a lot more to "cost" than just the postage. It's about convenience and the option of changing your diet along the way, instead of buying everything up front and being stuck with it. Believe me ...your tastes WILL change.

Have someone mail you a box of "goodies" every once in a while but otherwise consider buying as you go. There is more than ample opportunity to re-supply along the way, unless of course you have special dietary needs.

'Slogger
AT 2003

statler
12-06-2004, 20:01
I bought a thru-hike workbook before I left for my hike that said the savings for mailing your food vs. buying it in town was roughly $350 for the whole trip. If you're mailing food for two people I'm sure that savings would be considerably higher.
I recall this being the conventional wisdom back when I was planning my section hike, but that was 12-15 years ago. Now, with the greater availability of re-supply spots and increased costs of postage, I just can't believe this is still true on the AT.

Other trails, and for people with special dietary needs, it might be a different story.

Lone Wolf
12-06-2004, 20:05
My first thru-hike was 18 years ago and I didn't do any maildrops. There was plenty of resupply places back then and even more now. Mail drops are mostly inconvienant and costly.

The Solemates
12-07-2004, 13:44
We did 50% MD, 50% buy-along-the-way. We resupplied 34 times I think. We never really got tired of anything, but we bought a wide variety of foods to put in our MDs.

TakeABreak
12-07-2004, 15:46
I used mail drops on my hike, and would do it again, heres why.

One I vacuum sealed all of my food I had mailed, this kept it fresh, kept the smell down, this also does away with all of the bulk and weight from packaging.

I wanted high energy, high fat withgood taste and the least amount of weight, I always to figure this out before mostly by reading labels and trying different things before hand.

I also dried my own vegetables, fruit, jerky and such. People I hiked with said I was probably the fed hiker on the trail.

With all the non postal places along the trail that will accept mail drops, one can almost resupply twice a week without using a post office.

I also varried my diet, knew when I was getting a new t-shirt and socks, always had new zip-locs and trash compactor bags (which I gave a lot away or left in hiker boxes).

I also bought fresh fruit and vegeables in towns, fuel, cheese, bread, lunch meats and meals, so I got what I wanted for meals and did put a little in the local economy.

SalParadise
12-07-2004, 18:05
I'll try to dig up the workbook for you, Shrike.

I never really had much bulk at all getting my food from the grocery. It was just a matter of throwing the packaging away before packing it.

If anything, instead of a ton of maildrops, maybe make them sparce or go with a bounce box. I would say that what I missed from not getting drops were the ziplock's in bulk and most definitely the dehydrated vegetables, they taste so good. Maybe some weight-gainer shakes as well. And since that's all I'd really want mailed, it wouldn't be too expensive.

Discussions of this nature often turn to the nature of quality, so maybe it's more a question of how much better-quality food is worth to you.

Jack Tarlin
12-07-2004, 18:35
I agree with Take A Break that preparing one's food in advance can absolutely help you eat better, and this is true whether one is on a specialized diet or if one simply wants to eat healthier.

I'm still not convinced that this saves a whole lot of money, especially when you throw in the cost of a dehydrator, a sealing machine, ONE'S TIME spent playing with recipes, postage, etc.

Also, if you live far from the Trail, the postage costs can be formidable; t's costs a lot more to send big boxes from Arizona or Oregon than it does from Delaware. So keep this in mind if you're thinking about sending yourself a lot of packages.

One thing that hasn't been said is that maildrops can save money by limiting the number of times, and ammount of time you spend in supermarkets: If you're ONLY going to markets to "fill in" your maildrops with fresh fruit, snacks, etc., this presumably could save you a bundle, as the very fact that one was spending less time in stores inevitably would mean less money spent there: When you're getting ALL your food en route, you tend to spend a lot of time and money in marketplaces and you do a lot of "impulse" buying; if 90% of your food was already pre-purchased, a lot of these later purchases would be avoidable and un-necessary.

So in the end it's kind of a crapshoot. If you have the time and energy to play with a dehydrator and pre-prepare and package your own food, then for some folks I'd say this is a good idea. Otherwise, I think the trail has changed enough in recent years (and has better guidebooks, too) so that folks know in advance where they can most sensibly re-supply en route. (This also means that they can carry less on each stretch as they won't have to deal with 5-7 day food-drops which can add up to 20 pounds of weight to your pack!)

Another tip that I don't think anyone has mentioned: I always try to prepare a shopping list before I get to town; I usually do this the night before I know I'm going to hit a town, and then I check it again that morning. The advantages to preparing a list ahead of time:

*By emptying out your food bag and taking an inventory and writing everything down everything beforehand, you know EXACTLY what you need from town, and what you don't, making it less likely that you'll over-buy. And if you've been carrying something for days that you know you are't likely to eat, you can get rid of it before hauling it another fifty miles.

*You also won't UNDER-buy as by doing an inventory before-hand, you'll
know exactly what you need.

*A written shopping list decreases the likelihood that you'll forget something important---batteries, film, first-aid. If you rely only on memory, it's very easy to leave town without remembering that you needed to make a vital purchase. In fact, a pe-written "Town List" of EVERYTHING you need to do helps make your town stops more efficient, and makes it far less likely that you'll forget something important, such as buying new insoles, getting fuel, sending a friend a birthday card, etc. Towns can be kind of frenetic sometimes, and not all that restful; I've discovered that by marking things off on a "TO DO: list makes it quicker and easier to get your towns stuff done, you can use maps of Trail towns to figure out the most efficient way of accomplishing this, and it absolutley makes it less likely that you'll forget to do something important. It's a real pain in the neck to get back on the Trail and only then remembering the sox you forgot to buy, or the sick relative you'd meant to call, etc.

*A written shopping list, which you cross off as you go, will get you out of the market faster, which means less impulse buying, less purchase of goodies and snacks that you don't really need, and less spending of money. The sooner you're out of the supermarket, the more you'll save, as well as having more time for rest, recreation, or other errands. Supermarkets are like casinos in that it's very difficult to find a wall clock in either-----the proprietors know that the LONGER you're on the premises, and the less aware of how long you've been there, the more you're apt to spend on your visit. The best way to save money while re-supplying en route is to know exactly waht you need BEFORE you go shopping, and to get OUTTA there as quickly as you can.

Peaks
12-07-2004, 19:20
Just to take Jack's thoughts one step further, the less time you spend in towns, the less you are going to spend. If you are doing the AT on the cheap, then get in and get out.

On thing that worked for me was to do a short day into town such that I arrived mid day rather than do a long day the previous day in order to get to town at the end of the day. The afternoon gave me enough time for laundry and resupply. If I wanted to, I probably could have gotten back out of town the same day.

A-Train
12-07-2004, 21:32
I've really taken a liking to either doing "half days" or even better, hitching in early in the day, spending a couple hours in town and hiking out later that afternoon/evening. One thing that is nice about that is that you avoid blowing money on lodging and will obviously not spend excessive money on food, snacking, etc. as others have mentioned. Trust me, if your loafing around town, your gonna be snacking, eating 3 deserts and going back for more.

My little "trick" is to carry food out of town. A dollar or two at mcdonalds or a couple bucks at a pizzeria can translate into a nice dinner. It's a real treat to eat a burger or a sandwhich with MEAT on the trail and will certainly motivate you enough to hit the trail and make your nights destination!

But it gets better. By doing all that you get to walk during one of the best parts of day, late aftenoon/early evening. This is good in summer to escape heat and you can catch some great quiet time (I find) and maybe even a good sunset or sky colors.

It sure beats a night in town!

neo
12-08-2004, 00:56
when i was in port clinton pa,i wish i had mailed a care pakage to myself
could not even by a roll of toilit paper there,they both have their pros and cons,
i plann on doing more mail drops my next section hike from dalton ma to gorham nh.mostly from georgia to dalton have been buying in trail towns.some small areas all they have are post offices,:) :jump :clap :bse

SalParadise
12-08-2004, 01:18
What I think also needs to be mentioned is how appetite change will effect mail drops if the hiker is travelling supermarket-free. Obviously the appetite grows substantially as you get further and further. This means of course that there will have to be quite a bit of planning done along the way with whoever is sending the food. Two pounds of food a day is just an average.

So now after the hiker finds the post office, they must now find a phone, and if it's a pay phone then you'll be paying a good bit for that call.