Shipments done by Travellers

after tranport from Belgium (see shipping for more details)to Malaysia,
will try to fly bike out to East Malaysia and back,
to Kota Kinabalu from Kuala Lumpur and return
bike will be custom cleared in KLIA, after that domestic airfreight
information will follow , yet undecided

Shipped a KLR650 and Panniers, duffel bags and a guitar.

I am very disappointed and frustrated by this shipping experience. The main lessons learnt were:

Shipping is a very costly exercise, especially to Australia. Barcelona is not a city with cheap shipping options and if you want something organised quickly, be prepared to pay for it.

My trip from Brisbane to Spain ended in Barcelona, at which point I had to ship my bike back to Australia. I left my bike at a mates place and was walking the Camino de Santiago (over six weeks), then I took two weeks out to organise the freight.

I contacted as many companies as possible and had the quickest response from Willmove. They did not provide a breakdown of charges as it was "too difficult". I found another freight company called Liberty Cargo, who gave me an itemised list of charges, but did not offer a crating service. I spent a week finding out info about both companies, and began pestering Embalex, the crating company Liberty Cargo recommended.

I had a horrible time trying to get Liberty to ring me back, and I found that all companies I dealt with would not treat my job as urgent. Eventually I received a quote of 1075EU from Willmove (including crating), and about 600EU from Liberty (plus 450EU crating from Embalex). The crating for both companies ended up being about 450EU!!!!! Insane! I had no real chance to build a decent crate, being stuck in a guesthouse in the centre of Barcelona.

I eventually went with Willmove and dropped my bike off at the Gil Stauffer warehouse in the Zona Franca (port of Barca). Hector Gonzalez was the man responsible at Gil Stauffer for crating the bike and he seemed like a really sound, switched on guy. I felt comfortable leaving my bike with him.

Just before my two weeks was up, I received another email from Isabelle Tejerizo (Delta Logistics) offering an itemised quote... Too late though.

Six weeks later back in Australia and I receive an email from Tomas containing customs export clearance docs (engine number incorrectly copied down from my carnet scans). I decided to call the company on the Bill of Lading (ECULine) and realised that they had put it into the hands of P&O cargo here in Australia. I called P&O cargo and they told me they had been trying to contact me for weeks. They had sent all the documents to my old address and had been phoning my old number. Fair enough, but why did they not email me?? Why not they contact Willmove? He had direct contact with me.

I begun the clearance procedure with Amanda Cranson from P&O, who is very friendly and helpful to deal with. The only problem then was the port fees here in Australia: $682 to produce a delivery order from P&O, a further $50 to organise a quarantine inspection, then another $165 for my use of their facilities to go in and stand there while the inspection happens.

This has descended into farce. I thought I was getting burnt from the Spain end but did not expect these ludicrous, multi-layered, conjoured charges on the Australian end. Live and learn. I will never freight a bike by sea again, only by air. I thought it would be convenient to have my bike arrive 6 weeks later, it was not worth the expense. I could have gotten my brother in law to drive to the airport and pick it up two days after me sending it on a plane, and spent the sea freight charges on 30 cartons of beer to sweeten the deal for him.

Finally, big-ups to a legend at Hellman Worldwide Logistics in Darwin, Graeme Lee, who managed to airfreight my bike from Darwin to KL for under $1200 AUD and also to Kittima Trakarnsinghanat who managed the same price (inc. crate) from Bangkok to Kathmandu.

.. Rating explanation:
... it

I shipped my motorbike (BMW R1200GS Adventure, model 2007) with Lufthansa Cargo AG from Buenos Aires to Zurich, Switzerland.

The steps were as follows:

1.) I contacted David Wright to get the shipping cost and procedure/handling information a couple of weeks before the shipping date. He speaks english and spanish.

2.) When I arrived in Buenos Aires I went to David Wright at the Lufthansa Cargo AG office to manage all the paper work etc.
GPS coordinates of the Lufthansa Cargo AG office in Buenos Aires: S34 35.774 W58 22.504
http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=S34+3...

3.) I brought my bike at least 2 days before the bike departure date to the Lufthansa Cargo AG office (Aeropuerto Internacional, Ministro Pistarini - Ezeiza, Buenos Aires)
AT the "Terminal de Cargas Argentina" at the International EZEIZA Airport in Buenos Aires.
GPS coordinates of the Lufthansa Cargo AG office at the airport: S34 48.541 W58 32.394)
http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=S34+4...
International Airport: http://www.aa2000.com.ar
Terminal de Cargas Argentina: http://www.edcadassa.com.ar
At the Lufthansa Cargo AG they give you further instructions for the shipping procedure.

4.) Then I brought my bike to the TCA office (Terminal de Cargas Argentina) to weight the bike. My bike was exactly 300 KG including the alu boxes, soft bags with my motorbike gear and other stuff.
Then they put the bike on a pallet (they construct a pallet for you) ,tie it down and the wrap it with plastic/cellophan.

You can do all the cutoms paper work in the same building. The whole procedure took me about 3 hours - most of the time is just waiting

Ok here is a break down of the procedure and costs for the shipping of a Land Rover 110 from Port Klang in Malaysia to Melbourne Australia. In Port Klang (which is really close to Kuala Lumpur) we tried to deal directly with the shippers who we had used before (PIL), however, they told us that this was not possible and so they recommended Mercury freight logistics. I always think that we are getting ripped off with shipping and here was no different, I have to be honest and say I did not trust these guys but they did do the job. They actually did more than their job because they also got our carnet stamped in and out, and it is worth noting that if you do not want to pay a bribe, do not listen to the Malay border guards when they say you don