Hi Pecha:

In the freight business (be it air freight, truck freight, rail freight, the mode does not matter), there are really only two considerations that drive price: One is the mass of the object (i.e. weight in kilograms), the other is what is called 'cubic weight', which means how much space the object takes up.

A motorcycle, being an odd-shaped object, always takes up more space (relative to its weight) than the industry average. In other words, if you draw a box around your motorcycle (total length + total height + total width), you will find that it takes up a heck of a lot more cubic space than what a shipment of Coca-Cola, or cases of paper, or frozen food that weighs the same amount as your motorcycle would take up.

Hence, the price that you were quoted (about 700 Euro) sounds more or less reasonable to me. If you were shipping the moto along a very heavily travelled freight route (e.g. New York to Los Angeles, or Moscow to Frankfurt) - a route that would only involve one transport vehicle, with no movement of your cargo off of one truck and onto another truck at intermediate points - then you might be quoted a lower price. But, Finland to Greece is not exactly a heavily travelled route, your bike will likely need to be transferred from one truck to another several times, and there are costs involved in doing that.

For what it's worth, some years ago I obtained a quote to ship my motorcycle from Toronto to Vancouver (a very heavily travelled route, and one where there is a lot of price competition between freight companies), and the quote was $800. So, what you have been quoted does not seem out of line to me.

I doubt very much if you will ever find a quote in the 200 to 300 Euro range, unless you contact a consolidator who is putting together a 20 or 40 foot container to be shipped between (for example) Helsinki and Athens. But, the problem there is that the motorcycle has fuel and oil in it (even if only in residual amounts), and the consolidator may be reluctant to put a motorcycle in the same container as one that holds clothing, or foodstuffs, or other items that might be adversely affected by a fluid leak or vapours escaping from the motorcycle.

Michael