Shipping dirt bike from France to USA
 

Hi peeps, just joined in the hope that you can give me some advise. 25 years ago I purchased a 1984 CR500 from Honda, when I lived in San Jose, California. I rode it in California for a few years and then moved back to France, the bike came with me and all my belongings. About 6 years later I moved back to the USA but there was not enough room in my container for the dirt bike so it stayed at my fathers in France. It has been there about 20 years and I would like to ship it to the USA so that I can ride it occasionally. I contacted one company in France and they quoted $2500 to bring the bike over, this was far more than I wanted to pay, I tried contacting a couple of other companies, but not one of them has responded. The bike is strapped to a pallet with both wheels strapped to the bike and I have a USA title for the bike in my name. Can anyone recommend or suggest a shipping company in France that could bring it to the USA. I am in no rush to get it here, but do want to keep the price down.. thanks for all and any suggestions.

Regards. Gary

There are cheaper ways to get a bike to the US, e.g., Stefan Knopf's containers at certain times of year (he also handles individual air shipments, but I know nothing about that): Transport . There are cheaper ways to get a bike into Canada, including the Air Canada specials which pop up yearly. And I don't know whether France is a particularly easy or cheap place to ship from; ten years ago it seemed like Germany was a much better deal. All the usual caveats, etc. etc. etc.

One obvious variable is whether your bike is street-worthy, or is in fact a "dirt bike." This might not matter to the shipper, but it'll matter if you pick it up in some distant city, like Vancouver BC.

If you don't get responses by email, try phoning instead. Sometimes that works.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

Try looking into shippers who do international removals of house contents, I used one to ship a bike from South Africa to the UK, it has to wait six weeks for their container to fill up in Cape Town but the very reasonable price included picking up in SA, customs clearance at both ends and delivery to my address which I was not expecting. This cost me around £550 but that was 5 years ago.

Thanks guys, not sure how to find companies that ship house belongings between France and the USA, but will try looking a bit more. The bike is an air cooled 2 stroke, Honda CR500 so most definitely not road legal!!

Gary