Sending a barrel to the Caribbean
You are almost certainly doing this for somebody else. That is the part most guides forget — a barrel is rarely for you, and the person who has to deal with it at the other end is not in the room while you pack it.
If you have sent one before, you know the awkward parts. Nobody tells you how much actually fits. The rules about food stay vague right up until something is held. And any surprise at the port lands on whoever goes to collect it, which is usually not the person who paid for it.
What follows is an attempt to put the answers in one place and keep them current.
Start here
| If you want to know | Read |
|---|---|
| What happens between packing and collection | How barrel shipping works |
| How much a barrel actually holds | What fits in a barrel |
| What will be stopped or refused | What you cannot ship |
| Which islands are served and how | Where barrels go |
If the shopping is the part you dread
Most of the work in a barrel happens long before it reaches a port. It is a Saturday of shopping, a car loaded twice, and a guess about whether it will all fit. ShippoHippo does that part — you pick what goes in, they buy it, pack it and put it on the boat.
ShippoHippo runs this site. Everything on these pages holds whether or not you use them, and other shippers are named where they are the better answer.
Who writes this
This site is run by ShippoHippo, who ship groceries and barrels to the Caribbean. Knowing that should make you read it a little more carefully, which is fair — so where something here is a judgment rather than a fact, it says so, and other shippers get named when they are the better answer. More on how that works.