Jon,
Do you have an example you can point me to (in private?)
Padraic pointed me to one solution using the negative margin, and I may have forced my page into submission (with further tweaks to come later).
This was based on this post:
http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?p=161936#post161936
I have something that will work (better than what I had) and i will continue to make some adjustments to the checkout page -- but we all could use a well designed pre-login shipping estimator for 4.1 -- and that is the weak link of the 4.1 FLC (as I'm sure you know).
Hint-hint.
If you can PM me or send me a link in private, it is appreciated.
Thanks,
Jeremy