shipping bike to Oz - allfreight

patchy

So... i'm emigrating to Oz in June, and want to ship out my pride and joy Focus Cayo as inexpensively as possible. I've had a quote from allfreight for sea shipping for £130 plus insurance, which seems pretty good - the only concern i have is with the box.

Does anyone have any experience with the sturdiness of said packaging? it's 'reinforced cardboard', apparently. The sales guy assured me that it's robust, but i need a second opinion...obviously i'll be pipe lagging the bike and wrapping anything breakable in bubble wrap.

Also, when these things are loaded onto the ships, is care taken with them or is it more like Royal Mail/airport handling where it's just chucked around?

cheers

Ands

Unless your stuff is going in a sole use container which is loaded and sealed at your house then your goods are always at risk of man handling. Your bike will go on a van to a depot, get loaded onto a container, container goes on ship, unloaded from container at other end, into warehouse, onto van, delivered to your new home (not forgetting it might do a stint in customs on arrival). In other words, a lot of handling.

I took one bike on the plane to Oz in a cardboard bike box (I had double baggae allowance as I was going on a migrant's one-way ticket). It arrived unscathed. Another bike went in the shared container (i.e. sea freight - scenario as above) and was damaged. We padded out between the forks but they were cracked and the dropouts bent - something must have been dropped on the cardboard bike box. We were also advised not to use bubble wrap on the frame as the temperature inside the container can soar when going through tropical zones and bubble wrap can melt/bond. Not sure how true this is. Have to say, however, the shipping company we used were pants and we had about AUD $8000 of damage to our furniture.

Where are you moving to?

andymiller

I'm not sure what the guy means by reinforced cardboard - presumably 'double wall' cardboard. It depends a lot on the size of the box: the bigger it is the less strong it's going to be. The boxes that are used to ship frames are pretty sturdy, but full-size bike boxes a bit less so. So I'd pretty much completely dismantle the bike and get it into as small a box as you can. Use frame protectors, pipe insulating foam, cable ties. You could also investigate reinforcing the box with corrugated plastic - someone did a useful little how-to about this. Try googling something like 'corrugated plastic bike box'.

patchy

Cheers -the impression i got was that it was a box you could basically roll the bike into. having received my bike from wiggle, i wasn't hugely impressed with the sturdiness of those size boxes. My thinking was to pad to the max and dismantle - I'd need to do this to clean it for AU customs anyway

reinforced cardboard I took to mean double-layer - my girlfriend used the same guys last year to ship stuff home and they were pretty sturdy, but I'm still doubtful. Apparently David Millar uses these guys but I would imagine he has a proper bike box!

Anyhow, thanks for the corrugated plastic tip - will check that out!

timman

If you are flying Air New Zealand there is a 10kg allowance for sports equipment and that includes bike. If you are flying BA that's totally free. That would be the cheapest way really.

I took my bike back to Hong Kong with Air NZ with just the CTC transparent bag (with padding and bubble wrap of course) and it arrived unscathed.

patchy

Nah, I'm going super budget on Cathay Pacific, so my baggage allowance is basically enough for a toothbrush and two pairs of underpants

i reckon box from bike shop and corrugated plastic is the way to go in lieu of buying a full hard case (for now).

jc4lab

http://www.tntmagazine.com/leavingtheuk ... rseas.aspx


http://www.tntmagazine.com/

This mag has lots of shipping links and adverts.and a few tips.forum contributions etc..Its the NewZealand backpackers guide..this mag is great for anyone touring downunder generally

http://www.tntdownunder.com/

andymiller

http://members.shaw.ca/boxyourbike/