TheGwilliams

Hello my husband and I will be moving near Houston come the new year and have been looking at different websites that ship items, but what we want to know is would it be cheaper to buy a container and have it shipped? Has anyone done this before? If so, how much did you pay? We dont want to ship a lot...just some furniture and other small stuff. Luckily the port isn't far so we can pick the things up...so looks like we are looking for either a port to port or door to port kinda deal. I know there's got to be someone that's done this before....please help!!!

Noorah101

Since I know it will be everyone's first question, I will mention here that the OP is coming to the USA on a marriage-based visa.

Rene

meauxna

Moved to the USA forum as there are many threads on the topic already.

Search under 'removals' as well as 'shipping'.

SarahH1409

To give you a rough idea, we have just been quoted £3000 for our own container to go from Aberdeen to Houston. The company will also come pack up everything and then use a sister company in Houston to unpack everything over there.

We were also told that it takes 3wks to go from the UK to Houston and then approx a week for customs to clear it once it is docked in the US.

I hope that helps!

TheGwilliams

Thanks for the reply...so are you using the door to door service? What company are you using? Did you ever look into DIY services? Cos we were thinking about packing ourselves and delivering it to the port and picking it up at the other end.

SarahH1409

It is a local company that we are using here (www.krci.co.uk) it is door to door. We are mainly doing the door to door route because I am expecting and my husband works away alot so takes the stress off me!

Tbh, we didnt look into doing it ourself, but I know the company we are using said if it is self-packed it can take longer for customs to clear at the other end.

Dougster75

We used Anglo-Pacific back in May. Cost for the 20ft container was GBP 4,201 from UK to Houston including door to door (Essex to Houston), packing and unpacking.

Would recommend them but hey, it's only shipping... get it as cheap as you can. We shopped around (a bit) and got 3 quotes all within spitting distance of each other.

The only prob with DIY as far as I've heard is that I gather your container is more likely to get "rubber-gloved" which incurs a hefty customs fee...

Good luck with the move.

Cheers,

Doug.

_jon_

We're thinking about the practicalities of moving and the shipping thing has raised it's ugly head.

When you use half a container, how does that work practically?

We don't expect to take much, just 2 sofa's, a large aquarium(?) and then smaller bits and pieces. Nowhere near enough to fill a container, do we fill a crate that's half container size?

Just curious at the mo.

ChocolateBabz

Not sure how much it cost but DH's work used Sterling Relocation for our door to door shipping and they were first class. 500lb of airfreight arrived within a fortnight and sea freight arrived within 4 weeks (of course it had to go into storage for 6 months but that's another story).

Bob

You don't want to do it yourself, for a start insurance will be a hassle and secondly, your more likely to get inspection issues on the other end and they will then add a considerable cost.

As for recommendations, there's been loads of threads for people moving to Houston so you should be able to find them and get some recommendations

Bob

If that's the case and your paying yourself, better off selling/chucking and then buying fresh over here, especially with the aquarium.

Norri

What about the poor fish?

_jon_

Gonna freeze the fish then defrost them when we arrive......

Bob

pre-flight snack?

big_fish

That's about the same as we paid moving from Surrey to Houston. 1 day to pack up in the UK plus 1/2 day to load. Make sure you know exactly who in Houston is doing the pickup from the port and unpacking. We didn't do this and ended up making lots of calls & sending emails back to the UK when the container arrived at Houston port.