Nice write up and photo essay, close to how I packed and shipped a Raleigh Comp several years ago.
Those Madone boxes are nice, the shop I help at sets them aside for when customers want to ship a bike off for a tour.
Have any of you gone one step further and removed the driveside crank and chainrings and shipped with the rear wheel removed to further reduce the box size? I'm giving some thought to this. The height and length of the bike box should be able to get almost down to frame only dimensions and then the width would be wider. I'm probably just sidestepping to a Madone-box format.
And one does have to consider the person receiving the bike at the other end of the shipment. I think I posted this elsewhere, but with the Raleigh I included notes on where parts went and how things were routed to help make it easier for the receiver to reassemble the bike.