>
Most cigarette orders are routine: the same carton, the same week, the same address. Then a trip shows up on the calendar and the routine breaks. You are leaving for two weeks, or a month, or the winter, and the question changes from “what do I smoke” to “how much do I buy, and when does it need to land?”
This guide works through that question in the order it actually comes up. First the amount, then the timing, then the address, then what happens if your plans move after you have already checked out. Every number below comes from the live catalogue and the published shipping setup, so you can do the arithmetic against your own trip rather than guessing.
If you already know your per-day pace, skip to the basket builds further down — there are four of them, sized to a weekend, a two-week trip, a month away and a full season.
Start with sticks, not packs
The single most common stocking mistake is planning in packs. Packs are what you carry; sticks are what you consume, and every carton calculation starts there. The catalogue is consistent on the fundamentals:
- One pack holds 20 cigarettes.
- One carton holds 10 packs, so 200 cigarettes.
- Canadian Goose cartons are built as 8 packs of 25 rather than 10 packs of 20 — still 200 sticks, different pack count inside the box.
- Nicotine pouches are a separate format entirely: a ZYN can holds 20 pouches, so a trip planned in pouches is planned in cans, not packs.
That last point matters more than it looks. A carton of cigarettes and a can of pouches are both “one unit” at checkout, but they cover very different amounts of time. Our cigarette terms glossary defines the packaging units if you want the full vocabulary in one place, and the pack sizes guide covers king size versus 100s versus slims.
How much tobacco a trip actually takes
Work out your sticks per day first, then multiply by the days you will be away, then divide by 200. The table below does that for the four most common paces. Numbers in brackets are cartons.
Trip length | 1/2 pack/day | 1 pack/day | 1.5 packs/day | 2 packs/day ----------------+----------------+--------------+-----------------+-------------- 1 week | 70 (0.35) | 140 (0.70) | 210 (1.05) | 280 (1.40) 2 weeks | 140 (0.70) | 280 (1.40) | 420 (2.10) | 560 (2.80) 4 weeks | 280 (1.40) | 560 (2.80) | 840 (4.20) | 1120 (5.60) 8 weeks | 560 (2.80) | 1120 (5.60) | 1680 (8.40) | 2240 (11.20)
Read the brackets as “cartons to buy”, and round up. Nobody buys 0.35 of a carton. If your trip is ten days at a pack a day, that is 200 sticks — exactly one carton, no slack. Most people add a pack or two on top for the days that run long, and that is the right instinct: the cost of running short on a trip is worse than the cost of one spare pack.
Two adjustments catch most real trips. First, travel days usually burn more than routine days — waiting, driving, sitting in an airport-adjacent parking lot — so a heavy traveller should plan at the higher pace rather than the average. Second, if you are travelling with someone else, double the sticks, not the cartons, and then round up once. Our guide to ordering for two smokers in one household walks through the pairing logic if you are buying for two people with different brands.
The three price numbers that decide your basket
Once you know how many sticks you need, the cost question comes down to three facts about this catalogue. All three are visible on the product pages, and all three are stable enough to plan against.
- Packs are $5.00 across almost the entire catalogue. The one exception is Rolled Gold Menthol Cigarettes at $6.00. That works out to $0.25 per stick.
- Cartons come in two bands. A small group sits at $29.00 and everything else sits at $38.99. At $29.00 you pay $0.145 per stick; at $38.99 you pay $0.195.
- The $29.00 band is five specific SKUs, not a whole brand. Discount Full Flavor Cigarettes, Discount Lights Canadian Blend, Playfare Ultra Light Cigarettes, Putters Full Flavor and Time Blue Cigarettes. Note that Discount Menthol Canadian Blend sits in the $38.99 band while its two siblings sit in the $29.00 band — band membership is per listing, so check the product page rather than assuming from the brand name.
The practical consequence for a trip basket: a carton costs less per stick than two and a half packs of the same tobacco. If your trip is long enough to justify a carton, a carton is almost always the cheaper way to cover it. The carton prices guide has the full band-by-band breakdown, and the guide to buying by the carton covers when bulk stops making sense.
What shipping does to the per-stick number
Shipping is a flat cost, so it lands hardest on small baskets. The published ladder is:
Method | Price | Transit --------------------------------+--------+------------------------- Flat Rate Expedited | $15.00 | 1-5 business days Flat rate Xpresspost | $20.00 | 1-3 business days FREE Xpresspost (orders $99+) | $0.00 | 1-3 business days Flat rate Priority | $45.00 | next business day FREE Xpresspost (orders $149+) | $0.00 | 1-3 business days Guaranteed Delivery + Signature | $0.00 | orders $99 and over
A single $29.00 carton plus $15.00 shipping is $44.00 for 200 sticks — $0.22 per stick. Two $29.00 cartons plus the same $15.00 shipping is $73.00 for 400 sticks — $0.18 per stick. The tobacco did not get cheaper; the shipping charge spread across twice as many sticks. Our free shipping guide explains where the thresholds sit and which one applies to your cart.
Timing the order against your departure date
Shipping speed is the part most people get wrong, because the order date is not the ship date. Two rules from the published support pages govern everything below: orders paid before 9 AM PST usually go out the same day, and orders placed after that cutoff or still waiting on payment go out the next business day. Delivery itself is Canada Post, typically 2-5 business days for most Canadian addresses and 3-8 business days for rural or remote ones. Canada Post runs Monday to Friday.
That gives you a planning window like this:
You leave in... | Order by | Method to pick ------------------+---------------------------------+---------------------- 3+ weeks | any normal week | Expedited ($15) 2 weeks | 7-8 days before departure | Expedited ($15) 7-9 days | morning of the same day | Xpresspost ($20) 2-4 days | morning, then watch tracking | Priority ($45) Tomorrow | too late to rely on delivery | buy locally
The honest read on that table: Priority at $45 is a next-business-day service, but it still depends on the 9 AM PST payment cutoff and on Canada Post actually moving the parcel overnight. If you are flying out in 48 hours, do not build your trip around a parcel arriving. Order earlier than you think you need to, or accept that the carton will be waiting for you when you get back.
One more timing note that catches people: business days exclude weekends. An order placed Friday afternoon with Expedited service is a Monday dispatch, and a 2-5 business day transit from Monday lands you late in the following week. If your departure is a Saturday, count backwards through business days only. Our shipping options guide compares the four methods side by side, and the holiday delivery guide covers the weeks when statutory holidays knock extra days out of the calendar.
Where to send it when you will not be home
This is the part of trip planning that actually decides whether the order works. Every delivery in this catalogue requires an adult signature and government-issued photo ID at the door — 19+ or 18+ depending on your province — so a parcel cannot simply be left sitting on a step while you are three provinces away.
Four options, in the order most people should consider them:
- Your home address, timed to arrive before you leave. The simplest option, and the one to aim for. Add three or four days of slack to the transit estimate.
- Your home address, with someone there to receive it. If a household member will be home, the signature can be theirs. Tell them what is coming and roughly when.
- A P.O. Box. The published support pages confirm P.O. Box shipping is available through Canada Post. This is the clean answer if nobody will be at the house and you would rather collect it yourself.
- A rural address without home delivery. Packages are routed to the nearest Canada Post outlet for pickup, which is normal for rural routes and not a problem with the order.
What you should not do is order to an address you will have already left, hoping the timing works out. A signature-required parcel that nobody claims eventually comes back, and tobacco sales are final once shipped. The guide to receiving a signature delivery covers notice cards, outlet pickup and the 15-day hold in detail — worth reading before a long trip, because that is exactly when a missed delivery becomes expensive.
The $99 line is also a signature line
Orders of $99 and over qualify for the Guaranteed Delivery with Signature Required method. In practice every tobacco parcel needs a signature anyway, so the $99 line is not a “signature or not” decision — it is a free-shipping and tracking decision. Cross $99 and Xpresspost becomes free; cross $149 and the higher free-shipping tier applies on the post-discount total.
If your plans change after checkout
Trip dates move. The published policy gives you a two-hour cancellation window from the moment the order is placed, provided it has not shipped. After that, cancellations are no longer possible and tobacco sales are final, so if a flight changes the day after you order, contact support inside that window rather than after.
Damaged or incorrect orders have their own window: report within two business days of receipt with the order number and photos. That matters for trip orders because a carton that arrives crushed the day before you fly is a claim you want to file immediately, not after you get back.
The full procedure for changing, cancelling or fixing an address after checkout is in the order change guide. If the parcel is already moving, the order tracking guide covers what each Canada Post status means and when a missing scan is worth worrying about.
What to carry, and what to leave sealed
Split the trip order in two: packs you carry, cartons you leave behind. Soft packs do not survive a week in a bag particularly well — they crease, the fold-over top loosens, and the pack dries out faster once opened. Take two or three packs in a pocket or bag and leave the rest sealed in the carton, opening a fresh pack only when the current one is done. The guide to carrying cigarettes day to day covers pocket versus bag versus glovebox and why a soft pack in a jacket pocket behaves differently from one in a backpack.
If you are travelling by car, remember that heat is the enemy rather than cold. A carton left on a back seat in direct sun through a window is the fastest way to end up with dry tobacco by day three. Our road trip guide covers packing for a drive, and the camping guide covers the damp end of the same problem.
Storing the cartons you leave at home
Cartons are designed to sit sealed, and an unopened carton tolerates several weeks of storage easily. Keep them sealed, in a cool dark place, away from radiators, furnace rooms and bathroom humidity. Do not open a carton “to check” and then leave it open for a month — once the individual packs are exposed and the carton seal is broken, the clock starts running on freshness.
If your trip is longer than a couple of months, the shelf-life question becomes real rather than theoretical. The storage and freshness guide and the guide to cigarette expiry both cover what happens to tobacco over time and how to tell when a pack has turned, which is the more useful skill.
Four trip baskets, with the arithmetic
Prices below are the live catalogue prices. Shipping figures assume the flat Expedited rate unless the basket crosses a free-shipping threshold. Every basket links to the specific listings so you can rebuild it exactly.
1. The weekend-away basket (60 sticks)
Three packs: Canadian Full Cigarettes, Canadian Lights, and one Time Blue Cigarettes for variety. That is $15.00 of tobacco plus $15.00 shipping — $30.00 delivered for 60 sticks, or $0.50 per stick. This basket exists to show why packs are the wrong unit for anything longer than a weekend. Packs are convenient, not efficient.
2. The two-week basket, one pack a day (280 sticks)
One carton plus four packs covers 14 days with a small buffer. Take a $29.00 carton of Discount Full Flavor Cigarettes, then add four packs of a different brand for rotation — BB Light Cigarettes, Classics Lights Cigarettes, Playfare Light Cigarettes and Nexus Light Cigarettes at $5.00 each. Subtotal $49.00 plus $15.00 shipping equals $64.00 for 280 sticks, or $0.229 per stick.
Two packs instead of four would take you to 240 sticks and $54.00 delivered — still enough for 12 days at a pack a day, with no spare. The four-pack version is the one to take on a two-week trip.
3. The month-away basket, one pack a day (660 sticks)
Three cartons is 600 sticks, which is 30 days at a pack a day with nothing left over. Add three packs and you get 660 sticks, and something more useful happens: the subtotal crosses $99 and Xpresspost shipping becomes free. Three $29.00 cartons — Discount Full Flavor Cigarettes, Discount Lights Canadian Blend and Putters Full Flavor — plus three $5.00 packs of Canadian Classics Original, Canadian Classics Silver and Canadian Classics Menthol comes to $102.00 with free shipping. That is 660 sticks at $0.155 each.
Compare that with the same three cartons alone: $87.00 plus $15.00 shipping, $102.00 for 600 sticks. Identical money, 60 fewer sticks. The free-shipping threshold is doing the work, which is why it is worth adding packs to reach it rather than paying the flat rate.
4. The season-away basket, one pack a day (1,200 sticks)
Eight weeks at a pack a day is 1,120 sticks, so six cartons covers it with 80 sticks spare. Six $29.00 cartons come to $174.00, which is over $99, so shipping is free: $174.00 for 1,200 sticks, or $0.145 per stick. Six is a large single order, so a mixed basket makes more sense in practice — three from the $29.00 band and three from the $38.99 band:
- $29.00 band: Discount Full Flavor, Playfare Ultra Light, Time Blue
- $38.99 band: Canadian Goose Cigarettes, Rolled Gold Full Flavor, BB Menthol
That basket comes to $203.97 with free shipping for 1,200 sticks at $0.17 per stick — still well below the pack price of $0.25, and it covers six brands instead of one.
A note on the spend tiers
The store publishes three spend tiers: $80 gets a free pack, $240 gets a free carton, and $480 gets two free cartons. A two-carton basket of $38.99 cartons comes to $77.98 — two dollars under the $80 tier — so one $5.00 pack added to that basket triggers the free pack. The tier listings are here: Spend $80 Get a Free Pack, Spend $240 Get a Carton, and Spend $480 Get 2x Free Cartons. The bundle deals guide explains how they stack with free shipping.
If the brand you want will not cover the whole trip
Long trips are where a single-brand order becomes a liability. Three cartons of the same cigarette for a month is fine if you never get bored of it, and tedious if you do. Two ways around it:
- Build the trip from two or three families. A carton from the Canadian Cigarettes family, a carton from the Classics family and a carton from the Playfare family gives you three different blends at three strengths without leaving the $29.00-$38.99 band.
- Add a sampler to the basket. The Mystery Cigarette Pack at $6.00 and the Mystery Cigarette Carton at $50.00 are multi-brand assortments — useful if you would rather not commit a full carton to something you have not smoked. The sampler guide explains what to expect.
If a listing you rely on happens to be unavailable when you go to build the trip basket, the brand substitutes guide maps each family to the closest alternative by strength tier and format.
Prices by brand family, for building the basket
Every cigarette family in the catalogue, with its carton price band. Packs are $5.00 unless noted.
- $29.00 cartons: Discount Full Flavor, Discount Lights, Playfare Ultra Light, Putters Full Flavor, Time Blue
- $38.99 cartons — Canadian: Full, Lights, Ultra Lights, Menthol
- $38.99 cartons — Canadian Classics: Original, Silver, Ultra Blue, Menthol
- $38.99 cartons — Classics: Full Flavor, Lights, Extra Lights, Menthol
- $38.99 cartons — Playfare: Full Flavor, Light, Menthol
- $38.99 cartons — BB: Full Flavor, Light, Menthol
- $38.99 cartons — Rolled Gold: Full Flavor, Light, Menthol (pack $6.00)
- $38.99 cartons — dM and Nexus: dM Original, dM Smooth, Nexus Full Flavor, Nexus Light
- $38.99 cartons — single-lineup families: Canadian Goose (8×25), Canadian Premium Original, Canadian Premium Special, DK’s Full, DK’s Light, Putters Light, Discount Menthol, Time Full
Nicotine pouches, if you are stocking for a pouch trip rather than a cigarette trip: ZYN Spearmint, ZYN Watermelon and ZYN Peach Bellini 9mg are all $15.99 for 20 pouches. Three cans is $47.97 before shipping, so a pouch trip basket usually needs a fourth can to approach the $99 free-shipping line — worth knowing before you check out.
Coming back
The return trip is the easy part: your regular order resumes. If you left cartons sealed at home, check them before reordering — an unopened carton that sat through eight weeks of summer is worth opening before you assume it is fine. If you came home to an empty cupboard instead, the reorder guide and the top-up order guide both cover the fast path back, and the monthly supply guide will size a standing order properly so the next trip does not catch you short.
If you order the same basket every time, tracking is less of a concern than it is for a one-off trip order, but the track order page takes your order number and billing email whenever you want to check.
Frequently asked questions
How many cartons should I buy for a two-week trip?
At a pack a day, two weeks is 280 sticks — one carton plus four packs. At half a pack a day it is 140 sticks, which is seven packs and no carton needed. Round up rather than down; a spare pack costs $5.00.
Will my order arrive before I leave?
If you order at least seven days before departure on Expedited, usually yes. Orders paid before 9 AM PST typically ship the same day, and most Canadian addresses see delivery in 2-5 business days. Rural addresses should allow 3-8 business days, so order earlier. Nothing here is a guarantee — plan for slack.
Can I have an order sent to a hotel or a rental?
The site ships to Canadian addresses, including P.O. Boxes. A hotel or short-term rental is an address a signature-required parcel may or may not be accepted at, depending on the front desk, and you would be relying on staff to sign for you. If you need to receive while away, a P.O. Box is the more predictable route.
What if I am not home when it arrives?
Canada Post leaves a notice card and the parcel goes to the nearest outlet, where it is held with your photo ID. The signature delivery guide covers the hold period and what to bring.
Can I change the address after ordering?
You have a two-hour cancellation window if the order has not shipped. After that it is final sale, so get the address right at checkout. The order change guide sets out the exact process.
Is it cheaper to buy one big order or two small ones?
One order, almost always. Two small baskets each pay a shipping charge, and each falls short of the $99 free-shipping line. Our bulk buying guide and the monthly carton math guide both work through that arithmetic.
Build the basket before you book the ticket
The order of operations that works: fix your sticks per day and the number of days away, round up to packs, convert to cartons, then time the order against your departure date with a week of slack. Only then worry about which brands go in the carton.
Start from the full shop or the cigarettes category and build the trip basket while you still have time to correct a mistake. If you would rather try something new for the trip, the Discount, Canadian Goose and Rolled Gold families all sit in bands that make a multi-carton trip order reasonable, and the price comparison guide puts the whole basket in context against counter prices.
One last thing worth saying plainly: buy the trip supply from a position of slack, not urgency. The catalogue rewards planning — carton pricing, free shipping at $99, spend tiers at $80 and $240 — and none of those levers work on an order placed the night before you leave. Plan the basket a week out and the trip takes care of itself.