Help: Shipping a bike overseas

[krhea]

Anyone dealt with shipping a bike overseas recently. It's a bike I'm selling and I'm looking for a cost effective way to ship internationally. I checked with FEDEX and was shocked at what it cost to ship a bike box to Italy!!!! Anyone use USPS or UPS or any other good options?

Any and all help appreciated.

Thanks
KRhea

[tuscanyswe]

Anyone dealt with shipping a bike overseas recently. It's a bike I'm selling and I'm looking for a cost effective way to ship internationally. I checked with FEDEX and was shocked at what it cost to ship a bike box to Italy!!!! Anyone use USPS or UPS or any other good options?

Any and all help appreciated.

Thanks
KRhea

Usps priority- or express- international is your best bet. You would need to pack it in 2 boxes. I would imagine cost to be around 250-infiniity.

Id say shipping to Europe from US is pretty safe and reliable. Ive yet to loose an item shipped from the states to sweden.

I do know that lots of Ebayers use to have special notes about not shipping to italy. From what i gathered alot of packages were lost or took forever to arrive via the italian post office. if thats still the case today i dont know. This must have been 4 years ago or so.

Theres also this ive been eyeing but so far never used:
http://shipbikesint.com/ if you use please let me know how it goes.

Good luck.

[harryblack]

USPS all the way... I've shipped a cpl frames, one to Italy, one to France and, now that I think about it, one to Hong Kong 8-9 years ago... always USPS, no problems at all... Only question shipping frame v. bike is maximum package size, see --->

https://www.usps.com/ship/prepare-international-shipments.htm


And if you mean complete bike with wheels, it could be a problem... I used cut down bike boxes for the frames alone.

[echelon_john]

Yes--2 posters above are right.

USPS Priority International, 2 boxes; I did this to Italy this summer and it was $180 shipping total for the 2.

You will likely have to pay duties on the other end; even though I was shipping a used bike for my own use there, I still got hit with about $175 in duty. Probably could have contested it, but the time and effort to do so were not worth it to me.

[LegendRider]

It's been years, but I sent a frame to Australia via USPS and all went well.

[EFHeath]

USPS. Cut the box down for the frame only, send wheels in separate boxes.

I sent a bike to Hong Kong 14 months ago. No problems. The HK Post Office, by the way, is great, and not likely to be the source of any difficulties.

[cnighbor1]

ask around maybe a freind is flying over to italy have them take bike has luggage

[UberBike]

Just curious, what did FedEx quote you?

I ship internationally on a regular basis and prefer FedEx due to speed/tracking
But our volume rate is a lot less compared to average Joe walking into a retail UPS or FedEx store

Perhaps you can find a local high volume shipper to send it for you ?

[beeatnik]

ask around maybe a freind is flying over to italy have them take bike has luggage

Charles, you've got a great sense of humor.

[BShow]

Charles, you've got a great sense of humor.

You could buy the bike a one way ticket for ~$600.

[charliedid]

Worth a look...

http://www.bikeflights.com/

[ultraman6970]

What you have to do is this....

1 do it using USPS

2 insurance is a must

3 and maybe the most important, check the size limits to italy, you can send a bike frame box to japan but you cant send the same box to chile or brazil for example. So find out that 1st, maybe you cant send it to italy, who knows and im not going to do the home work for you :P

4 find a frame box or a bike box, cut the bike box to the dimensions needed, just sleeve the two half and put a lot of tape in the joint.

5 If you are sending a whole bike sure you will need a second box, same situation, play with the boxes.

6.. if you cant find plastic spacers things for the fork or the rear end just use blocks of Styrofoam, just stick the rear end in the styrofoam and ready to go, obviously cut the styrofoam block the same wide as the box.

7 bubble wrap or use foam or something to protect the tubes, paper? cardboard? If you have several parts that go with the bikes put them in another little box inside with the wheels or frame. you dont want those to get damaged or scratch anything, specially the frame.

8 Depending on the box you are using the fork might fit in the side or what is the best, put it in the seatstays, paper wrap the blades and the seatstays, and use plastic wraps (or whatever are called, zip ties?) and tight that really well, you dont want the fork to go nowhere.

9 you will need like 2 more styrofoam blocks to put in each of the top corners of the box before you close it... close the box with a lot of tape... done.

10 I know some are lazy with the boxing but you never know what happens with the boxes and you really dont want a single piece of the bike to start flying around inside of those boxes.

Hope this helps.

[UberBike]

If you use USPS do not buy their insurance, You will have to find a 3rd party insurance carrier.
If the item was sold on ebay they now have a 3rd party insurance partner.
The problem with the insurance provided by USPS is they only claim responsibility while it is in their hands. Once it leaves US borders they will deny any damage/loss claims

I have shipped a few items USPS to Italy specifically that finally showed up at the customers door over 3 months later with no tracking update.
The customer was kind enough to let us know it arrived.
Priority USPS BTW is not a time guaranteed product.

I tried rating a road bike to ship to Italy via the USPS website
The item would have to be broken into 2 boxes with the maxim insured value of $650 per box.
The USPS website came up with $106/box + shipping

The last bike we shipped to Italy was $155 insured at $1000 and arrived in 7 days and was shipped in one box.

Check your local businesses that ship internationally regularly

We often ship for other customers our rate + packing charge.
We do not ship pre packed items because he can not verify the condition if we did not inspect it.

There are a few customers that we see every Christmas for gift shipping

[UberBike]

Sorry forgot to specify
The last bike we shipped to Italy for $155 was via FedEx

[ultraman6970]

He need to find somebody with an account to start with... 155 to italy is a steal anyways.

[UberBike]

Shipped yet ?