Shipments done by Travellers

I paid the 315Aus$ to ship a crate of 1.3 cbm.
I got a crate from the Red Wing Honda shop in Melbourne which cost me 30 Aus$. When the bike was crated a friend transported it to Hermes where it got inspected by Customs. I left it there on Monday and the bike went on the ship on Friday.
At the NZ side i called Profreight(contact for Hermes)to find out when the bike was available. Then i did some paperwork for the MAF and made an appointment. At the Custom office at the airport(was closer) they stamped the carnet without having a look at the bike(?)
The bike was in the Tapper-warehouse where you meet the MAF inspector who has a quick look at it(5 min.).Once you paid you get it released from the warehouse.
This is what i paid to the Profreight Company:
-Administration Fee NZD 5.00
-BACC Application Fee NZD 5.00
-Delivery Order NZD 45.00
-Forestry NZD 6.50
-Port Service Charge NZD 84.50
------------
Total NZD 164.25

On top of that I paid the MAF 60 NZD:
which is 41 NZD Inspection,
and 19 NZD for theis transport(depends on how many people they come for)

That's it and you can take the bike and leave!!

Enjoy it!

We had to siphon off some gas - just did a token gesture, disconnect the battery, mission on the BMW650GS! And sign a few papers. Took a couple of hours. We were only allowed to have solid panniers, no tank bag, no front soft panniers and nothing loaded on the luggage rack. Apparently they said things have gone missing in the past and they no longer allow it. So we had to lug our stuff all the way back to the city with us!
Picking up the bike in Bogota would have been a lot quicker except that the internet was down for 3 hours while we waited for a bit of paper to take to DIAN. Once we had this we walked to the DIAN office, filled in a form, spent 200 pesos for a copy of it and the customs form that we got when we entered Bogota airport. The customs lady came back with us to get the bike. It was loaded onto a pallet with 2 other bikes (bound for Quito) and boxes all over it! We wondered if we had have arrived late, if the bike would have gone to Quito because none of the destination labels were visible! But once they unloaded everything, we reconnected the battery and were out the door - took 4 hours total, if internet had been going would have been 1 hour!!
Flights to Bogota cost $242 each with Avianca.

The shipping costs are for 2 motorbikes and 2 persons!
We had to wait 5 days, to find a dhow.
They are sailing frequently, but without a schedule!!

Crate:
I got an original crate for a R 1200 GS for free from Motorrad Seoul Co. Ltd, http://www.bmwbike.co.kr . Since I saw photos of travellers shipping motorbikes of other brands, I expect that they would support riders of non-BMWs as well.

The dimension of the crate added up to 445 volumekgs, on which the transport fee was based.

Schenker would have been willing to make a crate as well, but I remember that I found their service to be very expensive.

The brothers Kim, who own Motorrad Seoul, have been very helpful, friendly and fast: When I showed up at ten o

SBS worldwide provides good service. You just bring your bike, empty the fuel tank and disconnect the battery. That's all. They take care for packing, customs and transport.
Therese Kaniewski was very helpfull. I lost the importdocument which I got when I arrived in Miami from Caracas. Therese traced back that shipping and organized a copy of the importdocument. I forgot to hand over the keys of the saddlebags with the consequence that customs couldn't do their job. Therese came to the airport just before I left to collect the keys. That's customer care!
There was just one disapointment. I made a deal for US$ 1074 EXCLUDING the costs of the receiving agent. When I picked up my bike in Amsterdam I had to pay 1185 Euro and that is a lot more. For this are two reasons. First, Amsterdam is an expensive airport. Second, the receiving agent SBS selected turned out to be a sea shipper not an air shipper. Van Cleve has no office at Amsterdam airport. They organized another agent which has to be paid too.

This is the breakdown of the bill:
Transport Chicago-Amsterdam: Euro 943,94
Custom costs: Euro 70
Handling costs: Euro 47,40
Storage costs: Euro 94,80 (!for 1 day!)
collection fee: 28,32
TOTAL COST: Euro 1184,46

A sending agent and a receiving agent is always a problem. I shipped three times and two times I had to pay much more than originally agreed because of the extra costs charged by the receiving agent.