We should start a sticky thread titled "best practices for shipping bonsai".
I have a smidge of insight on that, being as my day-job is supervising the
cretins wonderful, careful, and conscientious people who handle packages in transit from one location to the next: You can
never have enough padding. Even if you mark it "Fragile", put arrows indicating which end up, and so on... no, those will be ignored. We don't like it, we reprimand and discipline employees who are too inconsiderate with packages, but any warning labels you put on a package asking the people handling it to be nice to it will be ignored by at least one of the poorly-trained apes who handles it. You don't worry about the decent ones, you worry about the sociopathic clowns sleepwalking through their workday at your expense.
When you ship a package, think to yourself: What will happen if this package is thrown? If it is dropped? Squished? Shaken up? It doesn't look like this shipper did, and that tree paid for it. Put the package into a sturdy cardboard box, do not skimp on the tape, and make sure it's thoroughly immobilized within the package. Not "I can't move it if I jiggle it a bit",
immobilized like its kink is bondage and it's its birthday party. I wouldn't recommend packing peanuts, because if the box should break open (it's rare - maybe one in a thousand, but it happens) then you'll be forced to rely on the care and consideration of someone who may or may not actually have the training to be in the job role of repacking, much less actually care about doing a good job. With bubble wrap, odds are much better everything will stay where it needs to be. If this is a valuable tree, double-box it so that if the outside is torn open or damaged, you still have your packing rather than some goldbricking, probably-fraudulent-injury-nursing jackwagon who's only working QA because she's too lazy to do the real work be stuffing everything back into the box. Try to avoid having a package that's more than about, say, three-four feet to any one dimension. Those are pains in the butt to deal with, and won't necessarily get shipped as quickly as smaller parcels will.
Oh, and I wouldn't send a tree through FedEx Express or similar service with the other, inferior package handling companies. That's gonna be going on an aircraft. You may not like what happens if the tree's on an aircraft.