air freight to and from usa
 

has anybody flown a bike from the north of England to the usa east coast and returned from the west coast? We're doing a lot of off road so want to prep the bikes ourselves so hiring bikes is out of the question! Im going to ring round some freight companies to get a quote but welcome any advice that anyone can share! cheers
drew
p.s there will be 2 bikes to fly out.

Drew,
I import parts from the UK (disitrbutor for Scorpion Racing, QT Services and other UK based companies). We ship everything over by boat using Woodland International. It takes a week to ship from the UK to East Coast USA (NJ). A few more days to clear customs.

We end up paying around 10 cents (US) a pound (US lb) plus duty and a few other fees. I guess if your bike is around 500 lbs you would end up paying about U$S 650-700. I'd have to check with our shipping company but that's my estimate.

If I can help in any way please feel free to contact me (JohnC at 4x4ag dot com).

Good luck.

shipping
 

Thanks for replyng John, a week is pretty good shipping compared to some of the timescales we've been given! (weeks) We're pretty sure that we want to fly the bikes out as we think it'll be less hassle and there will be less chance of delays(hope we're right)!Also it'll be easier to get them back from the west coast. saying that if we can't get enough money together we might have to row over yet! We're going to look around and sus out the cost but if we go by sea your shipping company sounds pretty good!
Thanks again for your help John
Drew

Check out the shipping pages.

I'm gonna ship my bike from Frankfurt to Toronto and return from Vancouver to Frankfurt. It's expensive but I think it's worth it. My flight cost is around $3100 for the round-trip and I can guess that if you fly it from London to Newark with Motorcycle express and back from say LA it'll cost you around $2500.

The biggest issue for you will be the insurance since the one I've seen doesn't allow you to drive offroad or even have it on a offroad oriented bike...

Hope all parts fall in place and you do get the trip done.

Cheers,
Zappa