DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

Could anyone please give us some advice on DIY shipping?

We are on an extreamly tight budget and are moving to Calgary from North East UK in October. We are wondering how we would go about shipping ourselves. Any advice, experiences, contact names/websites/numbers, would be greatly appreciated

Many thanks:)

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

Elite shipping are in Southampton - more importantly on line. They will deliver the container to your door, you pack within 3 hours, they ship it to eiither the receiving port for you to customs clear or to your new door, you unpack in 3 hour, saves 40% of quoted costs by others. Throw away /donate unwanted stuff, pack all goods with bubble wrap or soft cardboard or similar, all boxes below 20 kgs each, try to by all your boxes same size. Elite will have the specs you need re what forms to fill, whether you need to fumigate etc. Go onto the gov online site of the country you're going to, they will have all the detail you need re forms custom duties etc. Pack yout goods into one room to establish cubic capacity - will it fit into a 20 foot container?
Start from here - if you need more advice, shout.

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

OK gets ^^^^^^ gets my vote for most helpful post of 2010 (so far)

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

noted for this years poll in December

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

:p

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

Cheers for that Woocus....I think I may give them a call as I'm getting shipping quotes at the moment.

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

Do you happen to know the web address?
Thanks

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

thanks so much woocus, you certainly have been a great help so far, will get back to you if I get stuck..great advice :thumbsup:

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

www.eliteshipping.co.uk - I've used them twice and they were brilliant. If you're brave enough don't insure either, we lost nothing. The secrets in the preparation, and make sure you are aware of all costs - especially once your good are landed, have you a local clearing agent, what duties/taxes are required, and what the cost is for transport from harbour to new home. Also watch out as storage costs can be horrible, so you must be ready to move when notified your stuff has arrived. Good luck.

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

Thanks very much. Will look into it :)

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

We are shipping next month, had 2 shippers here today as well as 1 last week, and plenty of quotes via email.

They have all told us if we pack our own things, and something gets broken, insurance will not cover it.
We also are not going to insure everything, just things we really don't want to replace at our cost ie our plasma screen and dining room suite. We have/or will disasemble our own beds and such. We are going to pack 30-50% of the things ourselves.There is as much a 1000 quid difference in quotes for doing same job an shipping same items. Not sure how they can justify that much..and right now they are fighting for business, so once we figure out who to go with, we will nogotiate a price we are both happy with, we have a budget and we are sticking with it.

Edit: we just recieved quote from EVL for 3200 pounds (no pound sign) inc of everything except ins...we however are packing all the small items so we don't go crazy with bordom.

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

I agree with one of the posters above, we shipped our 20 foot container with a 4 bedroom house in it (contents of) un insured, the container en route is covered under the ships insurance so if the container goes overboard or the ship sinks you get so much per item. But what is the likely hood of that happening? We asked the shipping agent how many claims his firm had dealt with in their 20 years of operation he came back with 9!!!!

Those odds seemed pretty good to us. We had no one item to be shipped that in reality was worth the cost of individual insurance so we insured nothing.

We did take some precautions, Photos were scanned and put on a DVD or two, Very important docs came with us on the flight.

We packed 50% the company did the rest (and a very proffesional job they did too)

Everything arrived in Canada exactly the way it left the UK. So we saved a fair bit on the insurance cant remember exactly how much.

You have to decide is it worth the chance.

Best of luck with your move oh and if you pack yourself dont forget to itemise each box with its contents and rough value 1 copy in the box, 1 copy for the shipper, 1 copy for you and possibly 1 copy for immigration as goods to follow.

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

we got a good price of KFL in Hinckley, we found them off ebay of all places. They offer DIY which is what we are going to do

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

just rang elite shipping and they were extreamly helpful. They are getting back to me with a price in the morning. Also have another couple of quotes coming so will post on here when i have the info. Thanks again for your help:thumbsup:

Re: DIY shipping help, advice needed please
 

got our quote back from Elite shipping today, £2310 for county durham to calgary, cant believe the difference in the prices, the lady is so helpful too, thanks woocus for this advice. Not sure how I find a clearing agent etc yet, at calgary end and what work is involved there!!! Any help greatly appreciated :)