A Sitka couple boats 20 hours each way every year to load up at Juneau’s small Costco, spending about $10,000 to dodge nearly double local grocery markups.
Shelby Ellingsen and her boyfriend Charlie live in Sitka, Alaska, an island town on Baranof Island reachable only by air or water. Each year they make the long boat run to Juneau with friend Brandon, rent a U-Haul, and load it with bulk food and household goods before hauling the haul home by water. The U.S. Sun reported the annual trip and the price gap that makes it worth the slog.
Charlie is a commercial fisherman. The shopping list has to feed him and a five-person crew through the summer season. It also has to fill four freezers at home and cover family, friends, and neighbors who put in orders for heavy goods.
A direct flight from Sitka to Juneau takes less than an hour. The couple still takes the boat, roughly 20 hours each way, because a plane cannot carry a U-Haul’s worth of rice, detergent, dog food, freezers, and frozen bulk meat.
Ellingsen, in her 30s and raised in Sitka, put the math in plain terms. Local shelves charge nearly double what she pays in Juneau for a lot of the same goods, and the fishing crew’s appetite does not shrink to match the markup.
"Sitka has nearly a 100% markup on a lot of what we buy, so when you’re shopping for five guys on a fishing boat all summer, that adds up pretty quick,"
she said.
The examples are concrete. A pack of 152 Kirkland laundry pods runs $22.99 at the Juneau Costco; Sitka charges $52.49 for only 110 pods. A 25-pound bag of rice is about $17 at Costco and $27 at home. A case of Rainier beer is $15 at Costco and almost $30 in Sitka.
Between Ellingsen, Charlie, and Brandon, the yearly bill lands around $10,000. That buys a truckload of nonperishables and frozen goods, and items Sitka simply does not stock, including aerosols that cannot ship by air.
Juneau’s Costco is a small warehouse, about half the size of a standard Costco store. Ellingsen still treats it like a full-day mission. She rents the U-Haul, works the aisles in waves, runs carts to the truck, and repeats.
"I probably spend about five hours there between all the trips we make in and out. I could spend all day though, I love Costco and hate that I’m always rushed on this trip!"
she said.
Specialty stock is part of the haul. So are the big, heavy basics people back home cannot easily get.
"I’m always stocking up on specialty items that we don’t have in Sitka, like the Butcherbox chicken sausage breakfast links. It’s so random, but they’re the best, and we can’t get them in town!"
"We get a lot of large and heavy items for family and friends like laundry detergent, dog food, and olive oil. And there’s always someone that needs a new chest freezer,"
Ellingsen added.
Juneau also offers stops Sitka lacks. The couple uses the U-Haul to hit Home Depot and McDonald’s while they are in town. The $1.50 Costco hot dog combo is part of the ritual too.
Then everything goes back on the boat for another 20-hour ride to Sitka, where the freezers get packed and the fishing crew gets fed for the season.
Remote Alaska does not hand out easy bargains. Working people still find a way, one long boat ride, one rented truck, and one carefully stacked warehouse run at a time.