Shipments done by Travellers

Please save yourself time, worry and most of all,money. Kevin Fox will happily take your dollars and trust and promise you refunds and no worries. But in the end he will put the blame on everyone but himself. The full sordid story is too much to print and read. Feel free to contact me for info.

I contacted several places that either advertised motorcycle shipping or that I found here on HU and got all sorts of price quotes. Many of them only shipped to the UK, but my flight was into Frankfurt and I wasn't really keen on crossing that ditch just to get my bike. Schumacher would arrange shipping to any of the major ports in Europe and quoted $450 for my '03 BMW 1150GSA. This sounded suspiciously low, so after some investigation I learned one of several lessons about arranging your own shipping as opposed to paying somebody to do it all for you: there are several players in the process - the guys where send it out, the guys with the boat, the guys at the receiving end, and the governmental bureaucrats at the receiving end. Schumacher's $450 covered the sending out and the boat, but just set you up with the guys at the receiving end whom you have to deal with directly, and the cost for that was an additional 175 Euro. All in all, still pretty cheap.

It took about an hour to drop it off in Gardena, all went smooth. BTW, I had to do this about 2 months before I wanted to pick up the bike, 1 month for on the water and one month for loading and accumulating enough vehicles to fill a container as well as the unloading.

The awesome public transportation system in Europe made very easy and cheap to get to the places I needed to go to retreive the bike: The receiving agent's office, then the customs office, and then the warehouse. Unfortunately, the new battery I had ordered before shipping the bike turned out to be the wrong size, so it went with the old one and it was DOA after sitting for two months. This must happen frequently as the guys at the warehouse had a car starter thingy to jump start it and get me on my way.

While I was required to have less than a quarter tank of gas, I was allowed to ship stuff with the bike as long as I provided them with a list of everything that was going with the bike, stuffed in the panniers and a duffel bag strapped on top. This saved me a lot of hassle lugging camping and riding gear all over the place before getting to the bike.

It takes a bit more effort on your part shipping like this but for me the cost savings were worth it, it's also a little mini adventure on it's own! Admittedly, I speak fluent German, but I don't think it would have been any problem with only English.

Costs includes insurance at 1% of bike value.

If going to Europe, i highly recommend this service as you don't have to worry about customs or any other process. This is a stress free process as you don't have to worry about the bike waiting for you at the airport/port.

Additionally, Stefan has a BnB and a full workshop. The cost is lower than a shipment you would have to set up individually.

Shipped a DL1000 Vstrom via Los Angeles to Heidelberg, via Hamburg and Frankfurt Germany.
Trailered the bike to LA from Ladysmith BC to take advantage of a west coast container shipment. We were going down that way anyway.
Stefan has you provide all the documentation with the bike and a deposit to hold a space to him in advance, then balance before the bike is shipped. You require alot of documents to be 'notarized' so that he can act as your agent. We spent money with a lawyer only to find out that the logistics company we dropped the bike with had a notary on site that could have done it much cheaper. Oh well, live and learn.
Stefan ships with re-usable metal crates, everything you want to go should be packed up with the bike, we had panniers stuffed with riding gear. All ships for 1 low price.
He has had shipments from Vancouver in past and more recently, and does a R&R shipment out of Orlando Florida.
Communication could be a little better, but I would strongly recommend him.

Cost for shipping one bike R1200GS was 3000 AED including crate and all paper work. Bike arrive Hamburg 25 days later, documentation fees in Hamburg 190 EUR.