Shipping the bike over the Pacific and Atlantic
 

Three of us are going around the world beginning April 20, 2004. We have worked 3 months on shipping the bikes from the west coast to Vladivostok, Russia and have nothing yet to show for our efforts. We've given up on flying the bikes but the freight forwarders aren't even getting back with us on quotes for shipping by boat. Is it supposed to be this difficult to ship a bike across the Pacific?

It shouldn't be that difficult.

I have shipped my bike trans-Atlantic several times using "Motorcycle Express", and had no problems at all. One phone call, got a quote, dates I wanted, everything was trouble free. They even fill in all the papers for you at both ends.

This company advertises on this site, look for the round logo with an aircraft on it (usually in the top left area of this page). I can recommend them without hesitation, will be using them again this summer for Canada - Europe and back.

Michael

I'm heading your way, but April is a bit early for Eastern Russia in my opinion. I'm shipping from Portland, OR to Tokyo, Japan early April and will be riding in Japan until June before taking the ferry to Vladivostok. June-August should have some better weather for Russia/Mongolia... I'm airfreighting my bike and the costs from Portland to Tokyo are actually about the same as sea. You might want to think about the costs as flights/shipments to Tokyo are probably considerably cheaper than to Vladivostok directly. The only drawback is that a Carnet is required for Japan.


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Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius - William Blake