Shipping across the pond

[skiracer]

Does anyone have any experience shipping bikes to and from Europe?

1976 250 MC5 Original Owner
1976 Penton 175 XC

[Daniel P. McEntee]

I shipped three bikes to another VINDURO member several years ago. David Haines lived in South Africa at the time, and would come over here to ride in the ISDT Reunion Rides. He had picked up three bikes over several years and were being looked after by several other VINDURO members until he returned for the next riding/racing opportunity. Then the last guy who was holding them passed away suddenly, and David thought it best that he get the bikes shipped to him. I volunteered to do the crating but David did all the logistics. If the bikes wee shipped in one piece, then the ORIGINAL paper work for each bike had to travel with the bike, copies were not allowed. To get around this, since one or two of the bikes did not have titles, was to break them down and ship them as parts. I got lucky and found a local scrap yard that had a bunch pf wooden crates that had held food product concentrate bags shipped into the US, so that meant they were marked and approved for export. I got three of them that measured about 3ft wide by 4ft tall by 5ft long and they worked perfectly. I got those for less than a sheet of ply wood or flake board would have cost! I broke the bikes down by removing the forks, engines swing arms, shocks seats and tanks and kind of mixed them up in the crates the way that they would all fit the best. I was able to do this at work on a weekend and get accurate weights and such. Davey had made arrangements for trucking through a broker to pick up the crates to transport them down south to a port in Georgia, I think, and they were put on a freighter there and went by sea by way of Europe first and then to South Africa. I think all totaled it took about a month and a half and they were delivered to Davey's door. Within an hour or so of unloading them they had a 79 250 Husky that was one of the three assembled and running! The other two were a 76 Rokon and a Kawasaki KLX250 four stroke. The Kawasaki was the most difficult one of the bunch to take apart, and reassemble and had skin from both our knuckles on it by the time he was finished! I don't know how much things have changed as this was about 15 years ago or so, and with things the way they are n the world, it may be more difficult and take longer. I would suggest contacting some sort of broker like Davey did to look into it and handle the logistics.
  Type at you later,
    Dan McEntee

[skiracer]

Great info Dan, thanks!

1976 250 MC5 Original Owner
1976 Penton 175 XC