Shipments done by Travellers

Lucas is your man , at least at the time of this shipment becase the other cantacts for Port Klang in this website were all obsolete and I didn't feel the need to search for others as he was economical and professional.
Also a complete explanation was given in the 51st edition of the last ezine under my name as to exactly why Port Klang is the only reasonable place to ship to or from in SE Asia when shipping by sea.
The only down side to all this was it took a whole month more than he told me, almost three months!
But Lucas hooked me up with some Indians from Tamil nadu who nailed a crate together lickety split and the bike was ready to ship the next day! The most important thing was that the bike arrived with no damage.

First of all: thanks to Lyn,she was extremely well organised and helpfull(even knew where was the cheapest place to stay in town).

Jas costed us the following:

Freight Rate by Ocean freight: AUD 150.00 per CBM or a minimum of AUD 100.00

Jas Documentation fee: AUD 100.00 (Have to pay cash beforehand).

We organised our own crate, JAS didn't do it.

We went to the Harley Davidson outlet in town (Harley info: call Rob at 9381 9744). We've heard from friends that they used to give their old second hand crates away for free. This has changed however,they now charge AUD 80.00 for a sheet metal bottom,(very easy to use,strap bike on and no need to use mainstand,an fit in a box and driving gear,plus reuse the crate later).

We got a friend to deliver it for us right at the warehouse at the wharf,after Lyn gave us the papers to do so. We stored it there and took our time crating it the next day ourselves. No transportation costs.

Jas ship every Wednesday and it takes about a week.

Tip - do the waiting for the bike bit in Melbourne. It's a cheaper city to stay in, great victoria food market and small enough to walk everywhere. Auckland is expensive to find a bed,camping in the city cost $30.00 a night! Need to cruise around in buses).

In NZ we had to wait 4 days before we could get the bike out of customs.

First with a trip to customs(in an extension of Customs Street in the center of city) and MAF (Quarantine)in the same office.

Have your carnet ready.

Then call a MAF guy and make an appointment to get your bike checked at the warehouse. They were pretty easy on the bike and we didn't need to get it fumigated.Took 5 minutes to check. However the warehouse chief in charge,a cocky bossy guy named Martin Freer wasn't much of a help.

We were not allowed to drive the bike off the crate and out into the city. We wanted to keep the crate and had a friend with his van ready and waiting outside. Mr Freer insisted that we should go rent a trailer somewhere and only then would he deliver the bike, crate and all with the forklift onto the trailer and are we free to do with it what we want. A bit silly and
expensive.

While he is a very rude and very busy man, unfriendly and unbelievably unhelpful, two of his mates was standing just behind him frying barbeque patties on the grill while others was playing pool in the coffee room.

Other overlanders reports that they didn't have this "find yourself a trailer"-trouble like what we had, so I suppose it would pay to ask before hand.

On delivery we had to pay NZ$64.31 to MAF and another NZ$96.75 to JasNZ.

All in all it was cheap and easy to organise.

Super to have a bike here and Nieu Zealand is tremendous country!

I have done the crating myself. The weight of the crate was 320 kg and the volume 1.9 m

I shipped my KLR 650 from Panama to Miami in December 2003 with Girag, at the international airport in Tocumen, Panama (near Panama City). I arrived at the freight terminal, they weighed the bike, and quoted me a price of ~$530, plus $75 dangerous goods surcharge, plus $100 to crate it. I had them crate the bike, they then measured the crate and said because of its' size they had to charge, I don't remember exactly, but say $900 plus crating , plus dangerous goods. Of course the bike was already partially disassembled and crated, so I just didn't want to walk away. I haggled them down to where the total for everything was $879. Maybe I could have bargained harder, but that's what I paid. The guy I was travelling with paid roughly half that to fly his bike to Quito. Part of that savings is that the FAA requires bikes to be crated to fly to the USA, while Ecuador does not. At least that's the story I got. I was told to disconnect the battery, which I did not do, and let the air out of the tires, which I did lower them by 10 psi or so, leaving enough air that I could ride to a gas station in Miami. The fuel was on reserve, so there was little in the tank, but nobody checked. The bike arrived in Miami 1 day later than I was told in Panama, which didn't surprise me. It then took me 2 days to get it out of US customs in Miami, which did surprise me a little. All told it could have been worse. If I spoke better Spanish I'm sure I could have bargained better on the Panama end. Hope this helps.

From Chris and Spice

Panavia was the cheapest we could find after a number of calls and came highly recommended by Ricardo Rocco in Quito. The flight had to go through Bogota for a 24 hour layover which we weren't crazy about but it was
unavoidable. The only prep we had to do was roll the bikes into the warehouse. They asked how much gas we had in the tank and we said about a gallon and they said no problem. They asked that we just leave them on the floor and they would take care of the crating but we decided to strap them down to the pallet ourselves.

On arrival in Quito they were no longer on the pallet and they had both been over. One bike had slightly bent bars and a small dent in the tank and the other scratches on the panniers. Getting them out of Customs in Quito would have been a major hassle without the broker even though the VIN and tag numbers were not exact. I would recommend the shipper but do a little more homework on the crating process and come with
your own packing supplies. After all was said and done we figured the hassle was worth the money we saved.
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Contact: Panavia Cargo. In the phonebook and at the cargo terminal. Afella Portiva was our point of contact in Panama and spoke some English.

Cost: $875 for 2 fully loaded KLR650s $36 in Quito for Paperwork, $40 for the broker and $28 for storage at Customs.