Looks like I may have stumbled over a potential MBF deal on a rare-ish Italian motorcycle. Only slight issue is that say motorcycle is in Bellingham, WA and, well, I'm not and won't be any time soon. Well, at least it looks like the owner has to sell it sooner than that.
Poking around the Interwebz seems to show the usual two tiers of shippers - uShip (I'd rather not), outfits nobody's ever heard of, and expensive outfits like Haulbikes that I have heard of. To make this deal worthwhile, I can't really pay the equivalent of the purchase price of the bike to have it shipped.
Does anybody here have any experience with shipping a single motorcycle across the country?
I do not, but have heard some things from some moto folk which might be useful leads:
- Forward Air
- Fastenal at one point would ship between Fastenal stores for low rates; the bad/good/bad news sandwich is that the link I had is broken, but it looks like they did continue to offer "Blue Lane" freight, but that service appears to be suspended, though it's not clear whether that's something they did in general, or something Covid-19 related...
- Freight Pros is where the old link I had to Meridian Logistics redirects (person who used them said he took the wheels off and put it on a 4'x4' pallet at an angle, but later found out he could have used a larger pallet for not much more money).
I know nothing personally, and some of my info's old, but hopefully something will help. Feels like I've heard more about Forward Air than the others.
Find a college student home on Wuhan Break who has a Class M endorsement, fly him out to the bike, and let him fly ...er...drive.. the bike home.
As mentioned, Forward Air is a popular choice. They have motorcycle-sized shipping containers designed for the task.
Bellingham isn't too far from me, if you need local help let me know. I have a business address I can ship from if that helps. My work load is pretty light so I got some time....
I have a private carrier I've worked with in the past - get ahold of Patrick at http://trustedtransportmt.com/
Kendall
Is it at a shop or a reasonable owner, if so pull the wheels, crate it and ship it as a standard crate.
Cheap easy and how the pro's do it.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
It's a private sale, and I don't know how mechanically competent the owner is. I'm a bit concerned about partially disassembling the bike and whoever doing it then losing one of the unobtanium pingberkeleyits. I'm rather familiar with this brand of bike and the last time I ran into that I had to wait until a friend of a friend could make it to the Italian equivalent of the Carlisle or Pomona swap meets to source a replacement. part.
That said, crating it up does sound like a good way of moving the bike.
In reply to Kendall_Jones :
Thanks, appreciate it. I'll try to get hold of Patrick as well - I'm not in a massive rush to get the bike, but I want to make sure it's treated well as any damage to it during transport is likely going to result in a painful period of searching for parts on multiple continents.
I'm trying to have a bike shipped but because of the virus nothing's moving. I don't know if you will run into this problem.
In reply to Shadeux (Forum Supporter) :
That's likely going to be an issue, especially as the seller seems to be in a bit of a time crunch having to sell the bike.
