Wow, that was very organised, loading by pallets.

Read some articles last night on packing the container. I am amazed that our stuff got over here with out anything broken.

Thanks everyone for your input. Now just waiting for the quotes to come back.

Palletising made it simpler. You only have a limited time to load a container, like 2 hours, or they charge rent ! Likewise, at the other end, beg borrow or steal a forklift truck to get it all off, in less than 2 hours.

Without a loading dock that would be quite a challenge even if you're fairly organized. .... That's one pallet every five minutes, using a forklift, and presumably a pallet truck to roll the pallets to the door. You'd need a minimum of two people who both knew what they're doing.

It would take a good half hour even with a loading dock and powered pallet truck, and that'd be only moving each pallet once.

We had a car park, and a new friend dropped them all onto it in rows in less than an hour. That said, it took six months to organise what came off into some sort of order....

He obviously "knew what he was doing"!

I'd do it, if I needed to (which is unlikely now), but it's not something that you're average BEer could do.

We load quite a few containers and found the two hour loading rule is rarely applied.
The only time a driver made an issue of it was for a vehicle in a container which we started and drove out in five minutes.
Preparation is the key to loading, as I have mentioned in other posts we have a loading dock and fork lift but occasionally just used the fork lift.
To load a forty foot container without one would be quite a task.

Crazy as it seems, we loaded a 20ft with no ramp, in the pouring rain with us two and two men the company supplied. We didn't tie anything down nor set up any kind retainer to stop things moving.

Everything made it with out breakage. This was almost 12 years ago. Self shipping was plan B, all depending on the pound value.

Just for information for others reading I did get quotes from Colchester to Northern New Jersey, 40ft £1,595 was this best one.