A month ago, I checked a bag for the first time in three years because I was combining city and country stays in Denmark, and I couldn’t fit boots, sweaters etc… into a carry-on. Knowing that I was possibly consigning my bag to eternal lost luggage limbo, I packed less treasured clothes, and when I watched my bag glide away on the conveyor belt, I cast a wistful, possible last look at it. Sure enough when I arrived in Copenhagen on my non-stop, I learned that my bag was still at Newark. “It didn’t make it on the plane,” the woman at the luggage desk explained, but it would arrive the following day. She handed me a tiny toiletry bag with deodorant, a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a razor. Not exactly refreshing consolation but I was lucky; I did get my bag within thirty-six hours. My fears had been justified, and I renewed my long-held vow to travel only with carry-on or to send my bags ahead.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story on luggage delivery services with up-to-date statistics on the increased chances of losing your bags while flying in the U.S. and price charts on the many services that you can use to ship luggage to your destination instead. Frequent travelers don’t need the U.S. Department of Transportation figures (3.5 million bags lost so far this year) to know that they are gambling with their possessions every time they check in a suitcase.

Now, the Journal story would have you believe that there are lots of options for shipping, but having tried a number of them, I can vouch that the best one is FedEx. First, there’s the price advantage. The Journal chart reveals that shipping a 45-pound bag from Atlanta to New York overnight ranges from $178 with FedEx or UPS to $284 with Baggage Quest. What is mentioned in small type is that if you use FedEx Ground with a few days extra planning (which is easy, if, say, you are going skiing this holiday season) it costs under $100. Most of the luggage concierge services use FedEx or UPS for transporting the bags. What you pay more for is their “packaging or handling,” which I have found isn’t necessary since FedEx will pick duffel bags up from house and deliver them with just a FedEx tag to a hotel or house across the country. The one time I used Luggage Express, they required that my bags be ready two days beforehand so they could ready them for pick-up and then still managed to deliver them a day late. True to their word, since our bags were late, they did reimburse me for the ski clothes that I had to buy once I provided receipts and returned the items to their central office. So it seems that what you get for the higher priced concierge services is more hassle and some insurance. However, in the past three years when I have been using FedEx (not just for my luggage), they have never delivered an item late. So, I say, forgo the extra handling and the extra fee and use FedEx. Oh, and there’s the added thrill of breezing into the packed airport and passing the lines of harried passengers herding their suitcases and going straight to the gate to check-in.