Shipping your Motorbike

In the should I ship? section of this site I discussed buy/renting a motorbike at your start destination or shipping your own bike out there. This section covers sea freight and air freight of your motorcycle from the UK.

Should I Use Sea Freight or Air Freight?

Generally sea freight is cheaper than air freight but it is also slower and less predicable. The 2 adventure motorcycling books I have read recommend airfreight. However, as with all of this it will depend on your financial and time constraints and your propensity for risk.

I spent quite a bit of time toing and froing over this because airfreight was about twice as expensive as seafreight. In the end I reasoned that

  1. My motorbike takes up relatively more space on an airplane that it would on a container ship so it should have more say in where the transporting vehicle goes.
  2. The journey time is much less with an airplane than a cargo ship so there is less chance the airplane will be diverted to collect other cargo (no last minute detours to Brazil to load up with Palm oil - thus increasing journey time by 4 weeks).
  3. I've heard it is easier and cheaper to get vehicles of planes and through customs at airports than it is at sea ports.

The sea freight companies I contacted quoted a delivery time of between 5 and 8 weeks. The air freight companies I contacted quoted a delivery time of between 5 and 7 days. I drop the bike and hard luggage off and their depot and they schedule the bike to arrive the day before I do.

After searching on Google and Motorcycle Touring forums I asked the list below to quote for me for both sea and air freight.

James Cargo

Care Cargo

Bike Moves

Key Air

Dynamic International

To speed the quote process up I would suggest to provide the freight company with the following details on initial contact:

Details of my bike are:

Make/Model: [make and model of bike in words]
Engine capacity: [in cc]
Overall Length: [in mm]
Overall Width: [in mm]
Overall Height: [in mm]
Overall Weight: [in kg]
Date of 1st Registration: [dd/mm/yyyy]
Date I bought it: [dd/mm/yyyy]
Value: [in £]

Details of Shipping are:

Freight Type: [sea or air]
Date to be shipped: [dd/mm/yyyy]
OR
Date to arrive at destination: [dd/mm/yyyy]
From (location): [city or postcode]
To (location): [city or postcode]
Crating: [whether you want them to crate the bike for you]
Customs: [whether you'll need temporary import documents. explain what you plan on doing with the bike.]

Preparing the Motorbike for Transportation

I can only speak for air freight as I did not progress with the sea freight option. The companies above will either receive your motorbike at one of their depots (generally near a major airport) or they can collect the motorbike and luggage at an address of your choosing. I opted to have the freight company crate my bike and luggage. To prepare my motorbike to be crated I needed:

Shipping the motorbike is not the end of it

The freight company will generally cover everything that needs to be done to get your motorbike out of your home country and into the customs depot at your destination start point. They will not process your motorbike through customs at the other end. You will need to either do it yourself or employ an agent to do it for you. Prices I was quoted for using a customs agent were double that for doing it yourself. Your freight company should be able to provide you with contacts for customs agents or the paperwork needed to process your motorbike through customs yourself. If they can't do this I would question how often they ship motorcycles to the destination and whether you should find someone else.