Hi guys,
Firstly to all you thinking of self shipping your goods, we did it and we'd do it again. We saved a total of about 1300 pounds, which to us is alot of cash.

We picked our stuff up from a warehouse today, no extra customs or quarantine fees to pay so cleaning with Jeyes fluid does pay off.

As far as we can tell nothing is broken or damaged and nothing has gone missing, we haven't unpacked everything yet but what we class as 'breakables' are all still intact.

Things that were checked and unwrapped included shoes, petrol lawnmower, bouncy castle, some climbing gear and 1 box of kitchen stuff that had our george foreman grill, toaster and some pans.

Now it's just a case of putting things where we need them. So much is coming to us at the mother in laws and my bro in law is storing the rest of our stuff until we get a house.

Marie

Good for you I bet it's great to get all your stuff back. Our stuff has just docked in Melbourne we about 3 weeks behind it. I can't wait to see my stuff again..it must be a womans thing

Hi Marie, may I inquire how I would go about self shipping? Sounds very interesting. Thanks, Buzzy

Well done! I'm glad to hear everything has arrived safe and sound, although that's probably more a credit to your packing that anything else.

We're going to look into self-shipping too, as we need to try to keep costs down as much as possible so it's good to hear that you've done it without any problems.

Nicky

Nice one I bet it feels so nice to have our stuff again, our shipment docked on the 4th and have just had an e.mail from Crown/Brisbane and there saying 10/14 days....really hope so...everything crossed!!

Sue x

hi sorry to bump in, can you tell me which container company you used as we are seriously thinking of self shipping too?
thanks
k

Hi guys, there seems to be a few of you interested in self shipping so hear goes:


The company we used was a local company to us, there quote came in at being the 3rd cheapest but we bartered and got the cost down to being equal with our lowest quote which was 2079 pounds, this was for a complete sole use 20' container.
So if there's anyone living in or around Sheffield the company was called Freightworld and is based on Holme Lane in Hillsborough. If my memory serves me right, the guy we dealt with was called Phil and he was extremely helpful offering us packing tips and loading tips.
Boxes and tape were free although they did want a 500 pound deposit to cover the cost of all boxes.
Bubble wrap, settee covers and mattress covers cost extra but still weren't much.

Basically what happens is you get the boxes, bubble wrap and tape delivered when you want. Organise a date and time and they bring the container to you for loading. We got 3 hours free loading time but actually completed in 2 so if you're organised you'll get no extra charges. When you've done, they seal the container and give you all the info and reciepts. Then off it goes. After about 10 days we got an email telling us what ship the container would be on and an estimated date it would arrive at Brisbane port. We then had the option of sorting storage and customs ourselves or using a broker to do it for us. After phoning for quotes it actually worked out cheaper for a broker to do it for us so we went with the broker recommended by Freigtworld which was called Transitainer, the guy we used their was Andrew Moro, again, a very helpful guy. After clearing customs and quarantine (which incurred no extra cast so our cleaning must've been good) we had 5 days free storage so we picked our goods up after 4 days so it cost us nothing extra. For this the amount was around $1500. Then we had a $160 van hire.
All in all, comparing with the complete quotes we had, we have saved a little over 1300 pounds. The money we saved has bought us a car and we've got change so it was well worth it and would definately recommend it if you've got the patience to clean and pack everything yourself.

If you need to know anything else just let me knowand I'll do my best.

Marie

That sounds really good. I think we may look into it.

How would you find a company like freightworld, in a different area of UK?

Actually, I just thought, can you use any shipping company but then just choose to do the packing yourself? Is that what saves the money?

Hi,
We would be glad of more details,hoping to go in Jan. What if you don't need 20ft container? We just have to ship hubbys tools (he's a mechanic) & kids toys & clothes. We're selling the house furnished, so not much to pack anyway.
Do you think it would be worth it for us?

Hi, we phoned through the yellow pages asking if they allowed self shipping. Most of the big companies wouldn't do it, Crown and PSS definately didn't but Crown did. We ended up with freightworld as they seemed very professional, it was just chance that we managed to barter them down in price aswell.
I think the majority of money we saved was due to us doing our own packing and loading into the container. It meant they only had to pay wages for the driver, no packers or loaders. The other thing that we thought was good was that we were able to take our time packing, we probably did it slowly over about 6 weeks, which meant everything was packed properly and in a good order for us unpacking at this end. The other thing that saved us money was collecting it ourselves from a warehouse. The cheapest quote we had was from mini movers, this came in at around $800 plus fuel and more money if it took longer than 6 hours. This quote was based on 2 drop offs as some of our stuff is here with us and the rest is at the bro in laws. If it was just 1 house to deliver to it would've been around $550. As it happens we hired a van with a tail lift for $230 inc fuel and picked up ourselves.

Marie

Thanks Marie, may I ask - did teh fact you did this all yourselves affect insurance?

Thanks

Buzzy.

Hi,
Yep, insurance was affected. We couldn't get insurance against damage to goods as we packed ourselves. However we trusted ourselves to pack properly. We do have a 43" wide screen rear projection TV which we were paranoid about breaking. We packed it in it's original box and put duvets round the box, then when loading we had our king size mattress behind it, a single mattress infront of it and soft boxes round the sides of it, then around that we put heavy tool boxes and stuff to prevent it moving. It obviously worked as there's no damage to the TV. Our other TV (32") is fine, as is a gem stone globe and mirrors. Everything and I mean everything was bubble wrapped, we used polystyrene balls, screwed up paper and towels as protection aswell. And no end of ratchet straps were used in the container to keep everything still aswell. I think if you pack yourself you make a good job of it because if anything breaks it's your own fault.
We were insured against loss of the container aswell as mould and mildew damage. I think we paid something like 90 pounds for the insurance, it was worked out on a small percentage of the value of goods.
Hope this helps,
Marie

Thanks, it's very interesting.