Shipments done by Travellers

There is a Building at Istanbul airport next to the cargo terminal and Customs offices which houses about 25 shipping agents, along with the cargo airlines offices. You can ask at any of the cargo airline offices who they would recommend for an agent. I asked at Lufthansa and they recommended a few agents, but I ended up using Shenker Arkas ( office upstairs from the Luft. office). They were professional and easy to deal with, and their main office is a 15 min. walk from the airport. I left the bike at the Lufthansa warehouse at the airport, and they did all the tying down on their special pallets.

The bike arrived, three days later (one day late) in Bangkok. Having checked out Thai customs procedures here on H.U. I easily avoided the touts out front and went straight to Customs info office at the Bangkok airport cargo terminal. The excellent English speaking receptionists told me exactly how and where to go, to clear the bike. The total time was two and a half hours (one of which was a lunch hour) and then I rode the bike out of the warehouse. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Peter Cameron

Shipped Motorcycle to London, as we'll be living here for a few years. Motorcycle collected and crated by Peter Stevens Motorcycles - cost A$200. Hellmans collected by from Peter Stevens in Melbourne. Shipped to London cost approx A$650.

Hellman's also cleared customs and delivered to our house just north of London for an additional approx 180 UK pounds (almost as much as the shipment cost, but that's the UK for you). We could have avoided this cost by collecting and clearing the bike ourselves - but not enough time and too much hassle.

Insured bike before arrival (thru Carole Nash) using the VIN number of the bike. Took customs form, insurance papers, Australia rego papers, original purchase receipt to the local DVLA office (in our case Luton) -suggest you ring beforehand to make sure you have all the paperwork they need, and also that someone there knows about imports. In less than a week they sent a form with rego number (and the tax disc) that we took to Halfords to get a number plate made. The restriction on this form is that we can't sell the bike for 12 months unless we pay import taxes and duties. Fairly easy to do but needed quite a lot of research upfront.

First contact Dalys at the Panama office and she explains the process and the cost. They were fast and fairly efficient, within 24 hours of contacting them by phone, I had deposited my bike at the airport, the freight area is 8 kms past the airport itself, follow signs to Tocumen and also ask. I got the bus back into town - 50 cents.

The only problem I encountered was when I asked for confirmation in writing for the arrival date in Quito of my bike - they were unable to do that, though eventually I got it via email. Be aware that this company flies via Bogota and that there is only one flight a week from Bog to Quito (on a Saturday). I have heard of other people having problems and their bikes getting stuck in Bog. It worked well for me though and I cleared customs in Quito within one day on my own, armed with the letter from Ricardo as I didn't have a Carnet.

It was not easy to find a ship for South America in Tokyo. We called direct a lot of freight lines, some didn't speak English, some didn't have ships for SA, but all recommended us to work it out with an agent.

Finally we found Air Sea Express. The guy there, Mr. Takahashi was very friendly but he forgot a lot little, but important things. So we had to e-mail and telephone to him every day to be sure that he didn't forget any thing. But finally he found a company (Nedloyd), who agreed to ship the bikes to Valparaiso. We tried it before direct with Nedloyd, but they work only with agents!

In Tokyo, we got the crates from a BMW Dealer near the Port. He was very friendly and gave us the crates for free. The Dealer is; FLAT Ohmori, 090 3225 9804, ask for Mr. Ichikawa. The paperwork in Tokyo was easy, just give the lady from the custom enough time to study your carnet - she didn't know what it is...

The Agent in Tokyo worked with an other agency in Santiago, Viamat. There the service was good, Andrea Kuehne is very friendly and organized all very well. So we could pick up our bikes direct from the container and save the money for the warehouse, we just paid US 5 for the handling. For the paperwork with the warehouse (3 hours) and customs (1 hour, no problem) we got a custom agent, and he was very helpful; Juan Basta, jba...@chilesat.net (US 30).

The costs: we paid US$280/m3, which was the cheapest offer in Japan. The crates were exactly 2.5 m3. With all the handling, extra costs, taxes and the agents it was US$800 for each bike.

We shipped our two scooters PIAGGIO 125cc Liberty from Lima to Bangkok. Best is to go straight to Lima International airport. Just in front, you will see an IMPORT/EXPORT Area where you will find all companies for shipping your bikes.

It took us 1 day to make the box, do the customs papers and pay Lufthansa! We ended at 8:00pm with the customs saying we had to leave Lima the following morning...

Measurement of our box :
1/ weight : 429 Kg Dimensions : 1.95 x 1.25 x 1.36 = 3.3m3 (2 bikes in one box)
2/ Weight equivalent to volume : 3.3/0.006 = 550Kg
The freight is based on the maximum of 1 and 2

The global cost is as follows :

In LIMA :

- Wooden Box : 110 us$ - UA : 0.04 us$ /Kg
- Combustible : 0.05 us$ /Kg
- Seguro : 0.13 us$ / Kg
- Flight (LIMA - Bangkok) : 2.36 us$ /Kg
- Dangerous merch. : 50 us$
- GUIA (AWB) : 25 us$

We did all the custom papers ourselves and it just cost us few Soles for the copies...

In Bangkok :

Custom papers + handling : 30us$

We did all the custom forms ourselves! It took us 5 hours to take our scooters off the warehouse and to start riding in Bangkok. The journey from Lima to Bangkok is 4 days normally! For us , the scooters arrived 15 days after we sent them from Lima as they were blocked in Caracas by the Drug Customs....Bad Luck!!!