Since the cost of shipping was slightly less than the cost of the rims themselves, I did not find it too painful. I thought it was fairly reasonable given the size of the package and the fact that they went on an airplane. Oddly, I no longer see the aluminum westwood rims on Freemans website. I wonder if they stopped carrying them? At the time I bought them, I was not planning to do the drum conversion-- had I planned that all along, I might have gone with steel rims.