UK bike insurance for USA visitor
 

Anyone got any recent experience of bringing a bike to the UK from the USA for a short (couple of months) trip? More specifically:

1. Transport and shipping from the East Coast to UK (anywhere in the south)

2. Insuring the bike - which will be on US (NJ) plates - with a UK insurance company.

We're looking to do a two bike trip in August starting in the London area and riding down through France / Spain / Morocco. One bike (mine) will be on UK plates (as am I) so there shouldn't be a problem. The second bike and rider will be coming from the US. His options seem to be:

1. Bring it in on US plates and try to find an insurance company here (or presumable while EU rules still apply, in another EU country) that will cover him. This is vehicle insurance we're looking at, not travel or any other kind which he has sorted.

2. Import the bike (cheap as it's an old one), put it on UK plates in my name and have him added to my insurance policy.

3. Don't bring any bike over and use one of my other ones. That still leaves the insurance issue of US rider on UK bike.

Any suggestions as to helpful companies (almost a contradiction on terms :()
or where to start. I've had a look through the archives here and via Uncle Google but nothing beats personal experience.

Tourinsure.de used to do EU insurance for non EU registered bikes. (UK currently still effectively an EU member). Alternatively I know of a US rider who bought a UK bike and insured it through Bikesure (for a hefty price).

Hi Back' - someone asked a similar question yesterday, and this was my reply:

More specifically - since you are in the UK, it might well be easier to source a UK bike for your friend (registered in your name at your address) and just get cover through AdrianFlux, which is what I did for a US licence holder/non-resident a couple of years back when the visited.

Saves a lot of money with shipping - although if you ultimately did want to go that route, you can contact Shippio.com (they are based in Wollaston Northants) who I've used in the past for both bikes and other palleted stuff, and who specialise in transatlantic vehicle shipping.

Hope that helps!

Jenny x

Both of you - thanks for the replies. From digging around on their website Tourinsure looks like they'd cover the insurance needs. You'd have thought there would be a UK company who'd do it (and maybe advertising here) but my (admittedly superficial) searches have not come up with anything. AdrianFlux wasn't on the list though so I'll have a look at them later today.

Sourcing bikes for this trip has been a tricky one because of the nature of what we're trying to do. It's not just get a couple of bikes - any bikes - and head south. Summer 2020 is 50 years since we did our first long bike trip - to Morocco from the UK on a 250 Yamaha - and we want to redo it, Ted Simon's Dreaming of Jupiter style. The plan is to use the same model bike (but one each this time) but they are very thin on the ground. It took me a year to find one in the UK and even then it was a wreck, needing a complete rebuild.

There are a few more of them in the US but every east coast one we've chased down so far (5 at the current count) has had something major missing - either mechanical parts, essential paperwork or an owner with a brain. :( At this point though, with 5 months to go, we need to be picking up on stuff like insurance and shipping in the hope that something suitable turns up. There are alternatives - I have a couple of other bikes that could be used and my US friend also has a couple but they'd be understudies rather than the headline act.

Compared to the logistics of doing the original trip this one is proving to be considerably more complicated. Back then it was virtually one stop shopping for insurance (two actually) both of which were physically local in north London. You'd have thought half a century of 'progress' would have sorted this stuff out but if anything its gone the other way.

Yes, the main problem is the UK insurance industry doesn't want (or really have the facility to) insure non UK-registered vehicles, or drivers/riders who are non-resident... they seem to expect that anyone who has travelled 'overland' on/in their vehicle from outside the UK has already secured EU wide insurance - which they ought to have done of course if their vehicle arrived on it's own wheels via the tunnel or a ferry - but fail to allow for the fact that vehicles may also be travelling here directly from further afield - in the case of motorcycle particularly, often by air - with no facility to offer them insurance cover once they land.

I've come across this a number of times in recent years - typically when friends from the US have visited the UK and we've wanted to tour around on motorcycles.

In one instance, the simplest thing was to just rent bikes for the two weeks (a road trip through Europe to Italy and back) - not the cheapest solution, but certainly the most simple - just like renting a vehicle in any other foreign country using your passport, driver's licence and a hefty deposit.

However, there are obvious limitations with regard to rental bikes being used in off road and non-paved conditions like you would find in Morocco, so that is probably unrealistic in your instance - unless you rent them from a dedicated tour company once you're there of course, but that would be a very different kind of trip.

Subsequently we ended up buying a bike here (registered in my name, so effectively it was my bike even though their money paid for it) and just adding Lisa's name to my policy for that specific bike as a 'named driver' for those instances she was here and wanted to ride 'her' bike. However, increasingly insurance underwriters want anyone on their policy to have a UK licence [number], and we were fortunate that her name on my policy was 'grandfathered in' having been on it for a number of years.

The most recent example was when Lisa came over and wanted to ride a bike registered in the UK to someone other than me - ie. a borrowed bike from a friend - and that is when I eventually found that Adrianflux could help, who arranged a short term policy (again two weeks) under the exact circumstances - that is a US licence holder, on a [borrowed] British motorcycle not owned by them.

note. in the past (back in 2008) I also imported my own US registered bike into the UK - and at the time had no option other than to arrange 'green card' third party insurance through a German company (on a month by month basis - I paid 6 months in advance) which covered the whole of Europe, including the UK - just so I could ride it at home, and also in mainland Europe over that summer too. Ultimately I was able to re-register that bike in the UK so I could keep it there permanently on British plates and with British insurance, but that is a long-winded process and only applicable to certain bikes - you may find that if your US bikes are a certain age, you would be exempt, but you'd need to check with the DVLA in that regard.

Good luck - a couple of calls - one to Adrianflux and another to the DVLA might well show you the path you need to follow for this summer's trip - if only to discount those options?

Jenny x

yamaha
 

what model are you after for your trip?

An old (old now anyway) 250 two stroke. It's to match the bike we originally used which was a YDS6. If that means nothing without Google's help it's a pre RD model that Yamaha made for two or three years around 1970. In fact since my last post we've tracked one down in Virginia and bought it so we've now got two of them, my one in the UK and this new one in the US.

Only problem is that the Coronavirus restrictions now look almost certain to kill the trip - for this year anyway. The best laid plans etc.

Hi backofbeyond,

We cover most of the bikes that Martin has in store for his non EU clients.

We're very known in the community of over landing travellers for many years as we are also an insurance broker that provide coverage, and tour operator handling vehicle freight, vehicle storage, logistics, tours etc.

Our website:

EU

Our thread on HUBB:

https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...een-card-93020

You can email us: info@lobagola-mototours.com or insurance@lobagola-mototours.com

Take care
BR

Dooby