Bike Shipping

[7th day]

Anyone have any experience with having a bike shipped to you? Recommendations good or bad?
Thanks
Tim

[kawfeedave]

There are a bunch of places that specialize in bike shipping, some even have ready-made crates to load the bikes into so then they can easily move the crates around during transport.

There's a website called uship.com (I think) where you can post a 'help wanted' ad outlining what you need to ship and from where to where. Then you get truckers or trucking companies to bid on your job. I think the idea is that truckers use the service to pick up work on return trips from other jobs. There's no up front money for posting a job, but the website gets some sort of fee if you book a job. I don't remember exactly how it worked, but it was reasonable. They also had 'feedback' for each trucker, like ebay. If you use a guy for a move, you can go back and comment on your experience.

Just for reference, I was looking to ship a bike from Boston to Cleveland, and when I contacted shipping companies direct to schedule a move, it was in the $400-$500 range. I tried uship, and got some quotes down around half of that. Part of it is that the dates aren't all that flexible as these guys are doing the move on a return trip or whatever, but overall it seemed like a good option.

I didn't end up buying the bike, but it's worth looking into if you need one shipped. It really opens up the market for less expensive bikes if you can ship one 1000 miles for $200/$250. You could almost get the seller to cover half of that by knocking an extra $100 off the price, so the final 'bill' for shipping is around $100.

[83GS1100E_Tornado]

U-ship is probably the cheapest, but you are taking a gamble, you never know whose going to show up at your door. I had one good experience and one bad, and the bad one was REAL bad. Some meth head in a beat up pick up truck showed up, with get this. NO RAMP? WTF? I mean, this guy was so unprofessional, I called the buyer and told him what was going on, even videotaped it for my protection. He actually had a pit bull in a cage in the back of the truck, told me that was his "security"? Bottom line, bike ended up in Chicago with scrapes on both pipes and a dent in the tank, the guy wouldn't even let me cover it with a tarp, told me it would "travel better" without one! Oh well, he was cheap though, Texas to Chicago for 300 bucks, but you get what you pay for! I would not use them again, personally, and I have read other horror stories on the net about them. Some of their drivers are licenses professionals, but others are not, Google it and you'll see what I'm talking about!

[GS1000G Shopper]

I see you are in Iowa. I just got my blue bike from there to Florida. Check out my review of this uship transport service:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=186195\

Let him know you were referred by the guy in Florida with the blue GS1000G. Russ is a real good guy for transport, and he covers your area.