Shipments done by Travellers

I had heard how difficult it was to ship from Caracas to Miami and I was prepared for the worst. It is best to stay in Catia del Mar near the airport. It just happened that Tampa Airlines was the first place I walked into in the cargo area of the airport. I liked everyone right away. The office is staffed by 4 women and 2 spoke very good English. They called a shipping agent for me that day and the process was underway. By 5pm the next day the bike was ready for shipping. Bike arrived on time and with not a scratch on it. Contact numbers are on their website.

Shipment one way was 495 EURO
Local cost was 226 Canadian $
Shipment was on time delivered.
The agent in Montreal was Gillship Navigation,740 Notre Dame street W Suite 1120 Montreal, telephone(514)871-1033. Their service was exellent. It took 15 minutes for the paperwork. The Canadian customs is one block from their office and it took me 10 minutes there to receive the paper that the bike was custom cleared. Than just a cab-drive to the wharehouse to receive the bike without problems.
I shipped the bike back the same way, no problems either.

I followed the recommendation of previous posts to this site and contacted Robbie Stevens to ship my bike (GPz 1100) to New Zealand. He ships only to Dunedin.

Total cost was 600NZ, or $400US. A real value.

Robbie is a great communicator and stand up guy. I highly recommend for cost effective way to ship LA to NZ.

This is the fifth time I have shipped with Motorcycle Express. Devin Campbell has taken over from Gail Goodman as the shipping wizard, but Gail is still with the company.

The service, as usual, was awesome - no troubles dropping the bike off in Montreal, in Paris, the aircraft landed (with the bike and I both in it) at 06:15 in the morning, and I was on the road and riding away from the airport at 08:15.

Paris is a great airport to ship motorcycles into - the company that Air Transat (Motorcycle Express' air carrier of choice) uses for freight handling is 'France Handling' - they do a lot of motorcycles, and are very nice and welcoming to the riders. They brought the whole container, with the bike still in it, to me on the (indoor) dock, and allowed me to remove it from the can, get my baggage organized, even offered me the use of their shower facility. Very nice people.

French Customs is right upstairs, they are very ho-hum about motos - "Oh, bon, yet another moto - may I see your insurance? OK, merci, STAMP, STAMP, bon voyage!" Whole customs process took 5 minutes, they didn't even want to look at the bike, no fees of any kind.

I do highly recommend Motorcycle Express. It's a delightful group of people to do business with. Please note some interesting info for 2004: 1) Prices are not the same in both directions. Canada-Europe is about USD 1,000, but Europe-Canada is about USD $1,600. This is the airlines doing, not MC Express. 2) It is WAY cheaper to ship to Europe out of Canada (either Toronto or Montreal - same price for both) than it is to ship out of the USA to Europe.

Any questions, just write me - or better still, make a post on the HUBB.

Michael

All the work was done in whithin 3 days from surching a company untill recieving the papers in my hands.
The costs of shipping itself was 400 USD ( 125 USD per m3 and 25 USD port tax) from Veracruc to Austria via Rotterdam (Belgium) if you just send it to a major port town in Europe it should be 30-40% less.
The costs of all the paperwork, packing, full wooden box whith 3 m3, handlingcharge, coustom agents, transport from the packer to the port, etc. etc. was another 400 USD aprox. I checked about 5 different organications this was best offer, but I guess there can be a cheeper way to if you inwest more time in surching. All my stuff was send in 1 box only.