West Aus to South America?
 

I've done a bit of a search here on shipping a bike (land or sea) from Perth to South America (probably Buenos Aires), Jan 2008, but can't find anything.
Anyone got any ideas/ shipping agents I could use as I'm at a total loss of where to start..

thanks,
Bruce.

Bruce,

I used Cargo Force who are located out near Perth International airport (don´t have the number on me).
I dealt with Nick and shipped a 1200 Bmw in a crate to Valparaiso Chile. The crate was about 3 cubic metres (cubic capacity allowed for 450kg). The quote with insurance for 30G was around $2000Aus and it cost around $500 more to deal with the Chilean end.
It arrived 5 weeks late because the original shipper rejected it as the tank had a few litres in it (I had been told less than 1/4 of a tank would be fine) and it had to be sent with another company who ended up sending it via Hamburg where it was born.
The couple of thousand I saved and the fact I have had a year to do the trip made the wait bearable but as many people have said regarding seafreight, it can take forever.
The flying option is also a bugger from W.A. as you have to pay to send the bike to Sydney on top of all the other stuffing around. I estimated about $6000 minimum, bearing in mind it is a big bike.
Hope that helps.
Paul
My email is schmokinrider@msn.com if you want any more info.

kidney for sale
 

hmmmm

Your experience is adding up to what I've found out so far. Out of interest did you get any prices (companies?) of flying your bike from Sydney to South America?

I got some info on flying the bike from Mark and Aasha Venning (index) and Ralph Green who were all very helpful and contribute to horizons.
I can´t remember exactly what Mark and Aasha paid but I think it was close to 5G and you have to get the bike to Sydney and arrange preparation of the bike, dealing with the non dangerous goods certification (if you want a cheaper price per kilo) etc on top of that. In W.A. a non dangerous goods worker told me that according to aviation guidelines any vehicle that has ever had fuel in it cannot be certified NDG but Ralph Green managed it from Melbourne a few years back. I think Mark and Aasha shipped as DG.

I´m shipping two cars from the US to Aus later in the year plus have to send my bike home and all I have learned about shipping is that is expensive, difficult and a major pain in the arse.

Javier from Dakar Motos BsAs has told me several stories of people trying to line up several bikes being shipped in the same container to save funds and in most cases due to changes of plans etc it went pear shaped.
Good luck.

Bruce I have some contact numbers for Mark & Aasha in Brisbane, email me and I will forward them to you.
They Air Freighted over (via Qantas I think) when time was of the essence and Sea Freighted back when they were in no rush to ride the bike again.

Might be a cheaper option to ride the new DL over to the East Coast as a warm up ride before SA than to ship from WA.

When I freighted to Canada last year I allowed an extra month for shipping and ended up with only 1 week up my sleeve, and that was with some inside help at the other end.

It can be done hassle free, just takes some patience. Some important advice I was given early on was to sort out the bike shipping before your own ticket. The later is the easy part.

Check with Wallenius Wilhelmsen. I got a quote for my (Unimog/Unicat) camper of only US$240/cubic meter, including fuel surcharge; from Savannah Georgia to Brisbane. This is less than half your quote.

Charlie

how small can you pack a suz DL650??
 

Thanks for the replies

locksmith, I've sent you a pm for markandaasha's email address...

I'd don't have the figures in front of me but I was given a bunch of figures from Qantas from which I calculated (with the help of my school students - some 'real' maths for them...) that to freight it my plane would cost around 3000 dollars though at the end of that email it was mentioned they often charge by volume not weight and using the dimensions of the bike and their formula the volumetric 'weight' (thus price) doubled. Pulling the bike apart and cramming it into a smaller crate would help but how far (small) can you realistically get?? (DL650)

I haven't looked far enough into freighting by ship yet.

thanks
bruce.

Hi Bruce,

You will find that for all practical purposes you can forget the actual weight and just use volumetric-weight as unless you fill every available spare space around the bike in the crate with sandbags, the vol-wt will always be higher. Shippers always use the greater of the two multiplied by their $/kg to calculate price.

Something else to think or inquire about - freight forwarders almost always use a 2 or more tiered $/kg, with cheaper $/kg rate for larger vol-wt containers. When I shipped Kathmandu to Perth with Thai airways, I calculated vol-wt of a crate sized for my Vstrom with front wheel, screen & handlebars removed (ie crate of smallest reasonable size) mutiplied by $/kg (their highest rate). Then for 'fun' I calculated a bigger crate size so I just scaped in to next cheaper rate $/kg which meant only the screen had to be removed. Cost difference between shipping the 2 crates was around $30Aus more for bigger crate. I went with the bigger crate, rolled bike off the pallet, connected battery & fitted the screen, rode away. For $30 so easy, if it was $100 or more maybe I would have gone with the smaller crate.

Regards
John

Flying Qantas
 

Quote: I'd don't have the figures in front of me but I was given a bunch of figures from Qantas from which I calculated (with the help of my school students - some 'real' maths for them...) that to freight it my plane would cost around 3000 dollars though at the end of that email it was mentioned they often charge by volume not weight and using the dimensions of the bike and their formula the volumetric 'weight' (thus price) doubled. Pulling the bike apart and cramming it into a smaller crate would help but how far (small) can you realistically get?? (DL650)

I haven't looked far enough into freighting by ship yet.
end Quote----------

I've just flown my F650GS from Brisbane to Los Angeles by Qantas. Easy as pie!!

Cost (fully loaded!) was A$1695, with US$30 in LAX. Plus $145 Dangerous Goods in Brisbane. The staff charged me at a higher rate, which worked out cheaper for me, in the long run. eg: up to 299kg is $5.40kg, over 300 is $4.30kg. Loaded bike was 274.5, so they charged me for >300kg, which worked out cheaper. Great people to deal with. Even got an email from the lady some days later, asking if the LAX end had worked out easily or not.

Booked it on the same plane as I travelled on, went to Qantas Cargo in LAX, got paperwork, they provided a car and driver to take me to Customs and return (!!), reconnected battery, and rode away. Couldn't have been easier, in my opinion.

HOWEVER, I learned that one MUST deal direct, in person, with the Qantas Cargo office from which one wishes to depart, as phone calls DO NOT produce correct,
relevant information. :thumbdown:

** Forgot to mention that it was loaded straight onto a pallet, using tie-downs provided by Qantas - no crate, no hassles.

HTH
Margaret (now in Canada)

1.8 cubic metres???
 

I have had a few more quotes for which i gave some dimensions of my bike.
From Syd to BA - 3500AUD by air. 1500AUD by sea. They estimated the size of crate needed...
1.8 cubic metres- optomistic, yes?
What sort of port costs could i expect from the BA end?

Thanks for the help.

Hi Bruce

How did you get on? as I'm looking to ship to South America (DL1000) in about 6months and was wondering if you managed to sort out a reasonable price to ship?

Margaret, sounds like a good option as I'll be doing both Nth and Sth America in a loop (west and east coasts) so might look at a Nth Am option. Was it really that easy?

Looks like Perth is a nightmare to get out of! Bitof a Aussie journey before hand will be enjoyable any way.

Cheers

Damon

Quite easy once I found a shipping company..
 

Hi Damon.

It is not too hard shipping your bike from Perth, or too expensive either. As long as you aren´t think of flying it.
Can´t remember the shipping company I used but they seemed alright (I have no other experience to compare it to) and I can get you some details but not at the moment since I am at an Internet CAfe in Peru.. (PM me)
Quite sure the name of the company is Hindle-Buralli which I used.
The price to get it there was around $700 which is quite cheap. IT did take 10 weeks though so plan ahead if you go this route.
Also you should get hold of a reliable shipping agent in BA (if you ship there and I think it is a great place to start..) as I got screwed by mine which was supposedly worked out by HBuralli. (Cost me another $500 approx to get it out of the port). Ask on this site for a recommendation..

Do it.
South America is a blast.