The dirty tricks of the shipping industry and the Freight Forwarders.


Hello all,

this thread should warn you about shipping companies and Freight Forwarders and their dirty tricks. Knowing the tricks can prevent you from being overcharged, knowing the companies that do it, can help you choosing the right one for your shipping needs.

Please contribute with your negative shipping experiences, explain in short sentences the way the companies treated you and the tricks and lies they played on you. Please name the companies in full and the route you shipped your bike or car.

I will start with explaining two tricks, that were played on me, shipping my bike from Germany to Chile. I used Name deleted to ship the crated bike (2,6m3) from Stuttgart to Valparaiso. Name deleted is only a Freight Forwarder and they used SACO Shipping, Hamburg to ship the consolidated container to Chile.

Since I have shipped my bikes many times, I thought I knew what to do, but I was not aware of the tricks played on me. And I have never felt that cheated in my life. This is the reason I want to warn you about Name deleted

Trick No. 1: Bill of Lading (BoL).

Wikipedia tells us: A bill of lading (sometimes abbreviated as B/L or BoL) is a document issued by a carrier which details a shipment of mechandise and gives title of that shipment to a specified party.

Basically a BoL is the title to your goods and it has to be issued by the carrier, when the goods are delivered to him or loaded onto the ship (or airplane). Without the original BoL you dont get your goods (shipment) on the other side.

I used Name deleted as a Freight Forwarder (carrier) to ship my crate (containing a motorcycle) from Stuttgart (Germany) to Valparaiso (Chile). Name deleted used SACO Shipping, Hamburg, to ship a consolidated container to Valparaiso.

Name deleted did not issue the original BoL to me, even I asked them in time to do this, they only send me copies.

I was only told that I could pick up the original BoL from SACO Shipping S.A. in Santiago de Chile. So I arrived in Chile without the original BoL.

SACO Shipping S.A. (Santiago de Chile) would only give me my BoL after I paid their very inflated bill for port charges. I call this black mailing. So, I had no choice than to pay what ever they wanted.

As very inflated port charges I define this:

Total costs until Valparaiso port: 750 USD (incl. transport Stuttgart-Bremen, sea freight 2,6m3 to Valparaiso, verifiying the wood and stamping it)

Port charges and storage costs (this I will explain in trick 2): 840 USD

For a 40 ft container with a volume of 67m3 this would mean port charges and storage costs of 21.700 USD, calculated for full container with the charges I paid.

In all emails Name deleted just stated that they are not responsible for port charges, but they never explained why they would not give me the original BoL when I requested it. So, this black-mailing was only possible because Name deleted would not give me the original BoL.




Trick No. 2: Port Charges and delays.


SACO Shipping S.A. gave me the original BoL only 5 days AFTER the ship had arrived in Valparaiso. The regulations state that the shipper should get the original BoL when the cargo is loaded onto the ship and not when it arrives in the port (or after this).

This delay was caused by SACO Shipping S.A. on purpose, and as my custom agent told me, this happens very often with them. So, I can only assume this is to increase the storage costs.

SACO Shippings Mr. Marco Leiva in Santiago de Chile wrote: .... it is true that we had a little delay on sending original BL ....

At this point, I realised that there was no way to communicate with SACO Shipping S.A. and Name deleted in a normal way. I had become a victim of their black-mailing and there was nothing I could do about it.


Final: The total costs of getting my bike out of the port of Valparaiso were 1100 USD (incl. custom agent and other costs), making it a total of 1850 USD to ship the bike from Stuttgart to South America.


All the best.
mika from Bolivia

Thanks for the warning Mika!
We see lot of novice travelers wanting to ship their bike from EU, UK or Oz. They think they know the cost and procedure .. but they don't.

I like to point out the potential for many "Extra" hidden charges that can be "invented" and must be PAID before they will release your bike to you. These guys have dozens of such tricks to cheat you out of more money. And never count on the company who you dealt with in EU to help up out. They won't.

To put it simply, many shipping companies are nothing but low level gangsters and inexperienced travelers who've never used Sea Freight or Freight Forwarders are easy marks for them.

This is why I often advise AGANST shipping your bike half way round the world. You must also add to the total the amount of hassle and STRESS you're put through in an unfamiliar City, perhaps not knowing the language and dealing with common criminals and liars.

However, companies that ship LARGE amounts of cargo do NOT get screwed this way. They know the system well and represent HUGE income for the shippers so the gangster shippers won't mess around with them.

But a solo motor bike is easy to take advantage of.

My own experience is limited, but as private one-time customer you are at a definite disadvantage. The list of extra charges is very creative, and its going to end in tears. The problem is that you are more trouble per cubic than you are worth for many handling agents, freight forewarders and shipping companies.
I have read that air freight is cheaper and more efficient in the real world. Anyone have any comments on this?

Peter

It's not exactly rocket science.

I read a report about the global economy a while ago and it related to the cost of transporting a batch of mobile phones for export - out of China to just about anywhere in the world.

How much would you charge?
9 UK pence per unit was the figure.
Can I send a moble phone from China to the UK for 9p? Of course not, if only because I don't fill an ISO container, 20ft or 40ft.

Ever since the invention of the ISO container, sea-based shipping has been transformed and become an industrialised, relatively high-tech process.
Incidentally, because of under "real" investment in the USA there is not currently a single port there which can receive the latest, largest container ships; that's from another business report that I read a while ago.

If you put a few bikes into a container how much volume of that container is in use, based on the standard height of a container (I think the latter is 8 ft)?
A shipper could always bulk it out with a few boxes of mobile phones.

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Dave

Grant from here had a helpful and interesting interview a few weeks ago on Adventure Rider Radio, especially the air vs sea debate. It's worth a listen.

Jeffrey Polnaja - The Impossible Journey; Motorcycle Shipping by Land or Sea — Adventure Motorcycle Podcast and Radio Show for Motorbike Touring and Travel

Hi Mollydog, very well said. I will also start recommending travelers to buy the bike down here in South America.

Thank you Pinproject, I did not know this ... hope this thread becomes a bit of a knowledgebase about the tricks used.

mika

That's a REALLY tough one to answer, as it depends on how long you're going for, and where, and how attached you are to your bike, your budget, your appetite for paperwork etc.
As a GENERAL rule, under 1 month, no, over that, possibly yes. You can also buy there, or rent, or bike swap. Loads of options!
For some shipping details, see:

https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ge...pping-the-bike
Also see https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/trip-transport/

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

My 2c worth...tried to get myself and bike from Europe to Africa recently. Was in Greece so looked at shipping Athens to Port Alexandria in Egypt. After nearly a month of emailing, phoning many many freight forwarders, and trying to determine the process involved in clearing the port in Egypt with ZERO response I moved onto air freight options to Egypt (still fraught with wild extortion/bureaucracy) or Sudan. Ditto: vacuum of any response or reliable info available. And others reports of the frustrations of unknown spurious charges and crazy days to week long delays for administration and corruption. All in all it is cheaper for me to backtrack to Morocco and go that way.
That said - this IS adventure motorcycling. The bigger the hill the more satisfying it is to overcome.

Beginner's error: Trying to ship into or out of Egypt.... This was what I wrote 20 years ago: Chapter 5 The Big Trip

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