getting us and bike from florida to uk
 

hey guys and gals anyone outhere got any recent info on how to fly beemer gs and us back to uk from key west fl in the middle of winter, my only option at the moment is riding to canada for motorcycle express to fly us but its well bellow zero up there right now were pretty hardy ex london dispatchers but fifty bellow is beyond me HELP!!! any info would be apriciated .
Or we could sell our bloved steed here 102000 mile gs with lots of goodies to someone who knows that these bikes go on for ever if well looked after as this one is give us a buzz if interested tata phillie........

It's very unlikely you can arrange a service from FL similar to Motorcycle Express from Canada (which loads bike as cargo on your passenger flight).

BUT, you should be able to arrange airfreight or seafreight of bike from Miami to UK + separate passenger flight Miami to UK. This will be more 'complicated' and probably more expensive than Motorcycle Express because you have to do the separate cargo & passenger arrangements yourself.

Arrange bike seafreight or airfreight first. Miami has lots of international cargo broker/ agents. One Miami agent that some HUBB members use/ recommend is Econocaribe Consolidators, Inc.. Try them first; if they can't do it, just do a Google search on "Miami international freight forwarders."

Another option is MotorbikeTransport, which may still have space on his once-per-year containerload seafreight bike shipment Orlando FL to Heidelberg Germany leaving MARCH 09 (3 weeks) this year.

Book a separate return passenger flight after you've made bike cargo arrangements.

Do not try to sell your beloved GS in the US (assuming the GS is UK-registry), i.e., do not sell to a US customer, because a UK-registry GS cannot be re-registered 'permanently' in the US. If you going to sell it in the US, it would have to be to another Brit, who intended to finally re-export the bike from the US.

good luck

Let me put in a good word for Stefan Knopf at the link in the last post. I shipped my KLR with Stefan this past fall, and you sure can't do any better at the price. I also stayed at his place, played with his kids, asked a lot of questions about local attractions, and took full advantage of the offered space to sort gear, change oil, etc. When I got lost on the way in, Stefan escorted me to his place personally; when I forgot to take care of various odds and ends preparatory to shipping the bike, he did them for me after I left without complaint. His freight forwarders in are alsOrlando are also good people, and highly competent at what they do.

I used Warren (Warren Motorcycles On-Line) shipping in the other direction, and I have to say that he also gave very good service at a fair price. The program is different, however, and maybe you've looked into it already....? The website I found is horribly dated, but the 800 phone number listed there is the one I used a year and a half ago. He does roll on---roll off shipping via Lufthansa; I used New York to Munich and it cost me something like $1200 US. One advantage for me was that Warren managed to make things very flexible---my bike's engine grenaded enroute, and I was a month or more late getting to New York. Warren is physically located in Boynton Beach, Florida, wherever that is.

Seems to me you've got plenty of options from Florida to Europe, although maybe fewer to the U.K. With the money you save using Stefan Knopf you can pay him to store your bike until warm weather and still come out well ahead of most other forms of transport.

I tried to post the above information and more on the shipping page but was foiled by an apparently permanent site disability.

Enjoy,

Mark

Each winter Knopf Tours in Germany (www.knopftours.com) ships a container of bikes to Orlando for Bike Week. Check with them for the return date and availability of space.