I bought a chair once and when looking at shipping options the subject of Grayhound came up. It sounded good so I tried it!
I could ave rolled in the chair from Texas to California in the amount of time it took….but it made it and I didn’t have to deal with all the complicated oversize calculations. It certainly wasn’t over $500. I don’t recall exactly but I think it was well under $100. Staples is a good place to get a chair box, but you might have to wait until a customer buys one or they set up a new demo.
If you do sell a couple to the same person you should be able to book a full pallet on UPS Freight, ABS or OD from any Midwest location to any lower 50 for less than $200 (understandably not on a Sunday!). A full trailer is under $5000 and it holds 25-30 full pallets.