Shipments done by Travellers

The shipping details were all handled by Sandra at Dakar Motos. She did an outstanding job! I just needed to drop the bike off at the cargo air terminal in Buenos Aires and then pay for the shipping costs downtown. When I arrived in Atlanta, the America Airlines contact was not as familiar with the process, so I needed to contact US customs to get the bike inspected. After that, I just assembled the bike in the parking lot and rode off.

We first contacted ACX and Mehedi 4 weeks before we wanted to air freight our bike. We were shown into an nice (for Morocco) air conditioned office. Mehedi spoke good English, was well dressed, polite and very efficient. We asked him for a quote for our bike and were given ""an exact"" amount of 1032 Euros. We asked him for the cost of crating the bike and received ""an exact"" quote of 50 Euros.

We left for our tour of Morocco on our bike and Mehadi promised to send a confirmation email that would confirm our booking, air way bill etc.

To cut a long story short we had to contact Mehadi many, many times via telephone before we eventually received an email with incorrect flight dates. More telephone calls eventually got us an email with an airway bill number and the correct flight dates (BUT NO COST/QUOTE)

3 days before the bike was due to fly we showed up at the ACX office to hand over our bike. After he collected our details Mehadi calmly told us that the cost of the air freight would be 2300 Euros plus 200 Euros for crating. When we expressed our disbelief at the new price he merely shrugged, smiled and said that that was the cost. Further questions regarding his previous ""exact quote"" from our previous visit resulted in his boss getting angry and telling us to ""take it or leave it"", ""cash only"".

After ""negotiating"" ACX graciously lowered there price by a couple of hundred Euros and gave us a 50% discount on crating - which was still double the original ""exact quote"".

Its so obviously a scam. I've personally seen this in other parts of the world (Asia). The original quote is a sucker quote and you wont find the real price until its either too late or too difficult for you to go elsewhere. Don't know what you can do to avoid this one. If you ask for a written quote they will have a pre-prepared, credible sounding excuse for not giving you one.

The only silver lining is that once you fork over the cash they did provide a good service and took care of our bike.

PS These guys are agents for Air France

Total cost including all fees about €700,--.
The price was for container sharing which was organized by Hamburg-Süd.
No crade is needed, you just drop off the bike at the warehouse at the harbour.

Hamburg-Süd aren´t necessarily the cheapest, but the service provided was first class, no trouble or surprises at all. You get a procedure how to walk your way through bureaucracy and the harbour and do not need additional help.
I received the bike back in excellent condition: no dents or scratches.

Alfredo Amaya was friendly and helpful, he speaks good English.
The airport is difficult to navigate, you have to go around the back way, I drove there with somebody who knew their way around.

They will crate your bike for $100, I helped so that the packaging was as small as possible.
By removing the front wheel, mirrors, fender, and bars, I saved $300 on shipping.

The bike is roped to a palette, wrapped in cardboard and shrink-wrapped.

The bike arrived in several days shipped by fedex.
Because I rode out of Canada the bike was never officially exported. Canadian customs needs to inspect the bike on return, try to arrange this before you claim the bike in Montreal. I had to show up two days in a row because of this.

All in all, relatively painless!

We shipped 2 bikes (Honda Dominator & Honda Africa Twin) with the following measurements:
241x86x128 cm
241x74x128 cm

costs 1500,- Euro
additional costs:
Darwin: Agent: 300,- AUD
Quarantine: 286,- AUD (first 1/2 hs 151,-, then plus each 15 min 45,- AUD extra. (the lady gave us a pretty tough time. we had to dismantle the bikes as far as possible and she ripped all boxes with contents appart to have a look in - pretty picky. At least she charged just the time she actually looked at the bikes otherwise it would have been a pretty expensive day. we started at 9:30 and could just finish the bikes and the mess around at 4:00 pm. So had to come back the next day to pick the bikes up)

It was a bit hard to get quarantine and customs together as thez use different computer systems. Customs could already track our bikes and quarantine not.

If you think about getting 3rd party insurance and vehicle inspection in Darwin.
The vehicle inspection is pretty easy and costs 38,50 AUD per bike, but the 3rd party insurance is the most expensive in the whole country (NT). It costs 56,20 AUD per month. (nearly as much as you would pay for half a year in Western Australia). So we did it only for one month.

Shipment: they did a wrong measurement in Hamburg (246x88x133 and 248x88x138) so we first payed 1700,- Euro and claimed the wrong measurement.
We had to do a remeasurement in Darwin and it took us until mid July until we got the money back for the difference.
Also we did not know and could not see it on the documents, that there would be a stoppover in Singapur, where they actually put the bikes in another container and vessel.
And it happened what must have happened. The vessel from Germany to Singapur was on delay and missed the vessel from Singapur to Darwin, which only every 2 weeks.
So we we had to wait for 2 weeks in Darwin until we got the bikes.

But we have been very lucky and could stay at a HU member.:-)