Does anyone fancy sharing a 20' container from the North of England over to Halifax?

We have secured jobs and had an offer on a house in Shubenacadie accepted, now just waiting for ours to sell in Newcastle.

Probably looking, god permitting, in the next 4-5 months.

We have had a couple of quotes - £3600 from DB and £3100 from Bishops Move - and both say we will not even half fill a container, but cannot get us groupage into Halifax.

If I were you I would try other companies.

I have had recent quotes, mostly around the £3,100 mark for a very full 20ft container. Most of them said that if we wanted to take a few extra things we could have a part load in another container as that would be cheaper than upgrading to a 40ft.

The only difference is that the transit times become more than double with a shared load even if they are in a similar area.

So are you saying that I could deffo get groupage into Halifax??

Bishops Move said I could, no problem, when he came out, but then the quotation he has sent says I can only have a full container to myself!!

DB said that it was not possible to do part loads into Halifax and would have to quote me on full 20' container, regardless if i filled it or not.

Try Fox, Atlantic or Robinsons. I am at work at the moment so I can't refer to the quotes but I think that they all mentioned this. Others must do it too.

I really don't understand why part containers are a problem as all the removal companies are saying that they ship the Halifax all the time.

We paid £3000 for 20ft container - we were quoted for half a container at £2500, which would have been shipped to Montreal or Toronto, and then our stuff loaded onto a truck for transport to NS.
Paying the extra for sole usage meant that we got our stuff, completely un-molested in 4 weeks door-to-door!! Groupage would have added another month at least probably, plus the extra handling that your goods have to go through, increasing the chance of breakages etc.
Also, although the estimator thought we had 600cu ft, it actually ended up closer to 900cu ft once all the packaging was added etc. so half a container wouldn't have been enough!

OMG, you are scaring me now. Was the estimate really that far out? We have been estimated as an absolutely full container so if it is wrong we will be leaving half our stuff in the UK.

Thats really expensive!!! We are shipping all of our furniture in a 40 ft container all on our own including insurance for £2800 from AVM worldwide!!!
There number is 0800 833932 they're really helpful and they were recommended to us by 2 other people that used them.
Hope this helps

Think they were really just a bit wasteful with the packaging! The guys this end who unloaded for us were quite shocked at how badly packed the container was!! Nothing broken, but apparently much better use could have been made of the space!

Kind of implies the estimator didn't know what he /she was talking about ! Who did you use ? and what happened ?

Cheers for that Hippy Chick!!!

Spoke to a guy called James at AVM late last night, who said he would get a girl called Claire to phone me back this morning. Sure enough at about 9.45, this morning Claire rang.

Both sounded really helpful and approachable and she is emailing me a quote later today....... Unlike some of the others that took 3 - 4 weeks

Lets hope the quote is as good as their telephone manner

Hi Happy Chick

I also got a quote from AVM and it was very low. However it did not include packing of my items only loading them into the container. They did offer to wrap mt furniture in blankets but not individually pack the items like many of thge other companies. You have to pack and wrap all you items and that is where the time and cost is. If you just have boxes then they should be OK if not I would think very carefully especally if you have items of value.

They are basically a shipping and storage firm not a mover firm which i suspect is way their quotes are so much lower than others. Our other quotes for a 40ft container ranged from 4500-5600 so you can see the difference.

[QUOTE=Erinbrooke;6346870]Does anyone fancy sharing a 20' container from the North of England over to Halifax?

If you have less than half a container then their is a company here in suffolk that moves freight by the pallet. You just load the boxes and they tell you how many pallets it will be and send it. They must be using shared containers to make it work.

There maybe a similar company up your way, just a thought.