Having been in the freight biz most of my life, this is not much of a solution to go ground vs air. Ground often is handled more than air....and proper packing is definitely in order. Some manufacturing packaging is suitable for containerloads but not individual box transportation....
The story of my little SR6012:
After being born in Vietnam, and making the container trip to the US... to who only knows which port... and then broken down and distributed to whichever regional warehousing facility... it ended up in the posession of IQ Home Entertainment in Faifax Virginia. My guess, at this point, it was always transported on pallets via ground freight with a few of its own family members... maybe some brother or sister 6012s, some cousins like a 7012 or even an 8012...
And then one day July 7, 2018, it was selected to be shipped away with 5 other boxes. It was labeled individually and put on a big brown truck and sent into the world for a trip to Eaton PA. On July 11, 2018, it was picked up again, and labeled for another trip... to its forever home in Sonoma County CA, where it arrived and was unceremoniously dropped on the front porch on July 13.
At this point, the box was in good shape, but the Styrofoam was a little worn. Had a few cracks, but nothing too concerning. When I had to ship it out via FedEx Ground call tag, I put a little packing tape around the small fractures, and some bubble wrap around in the empty places, and sent it off to Orange County. None of the bubble wrap was sent back from that first warranty call, the foam was wrecked, and there was a hole in the box that came within 1/2 cm of tagging the volume knob.
When I had to send it out again, they sent me another FedEx Ground call tag, and a new box. The new box had some nice black foam that had perforations to tear out the appropriate shape for the receiver. I was unhappy with some of it, and using Gorilla Glue, made a little bit of a tighter fit for the receiver in the foam.
Only time will tell what happens on what I hope is its grand homecoming in a couple weeks.