Share a container from AK or WA to Vladivostok summer 2013?
 

Hi guys,
trying to figure out a affordable way to get my KLR to Vlad late spring/early summer next year, Its currently in Anchorage but i could ride it down to Washington if it works better to ship from there..Any a advice appreciated.

We shipped 2 bikes by container Seattle to Vladivostok last June (2011) but cost was way over what we wanted to pay - something like $6000.

That was for a 20ft - we were let down on sharing so igt cost a lot more than we had budgeted - you can get 6 bikes in a 20ft.

Forgot to say that you will need Yuri Melnikov and his able assistant Svetlana to guide you through customs in Vladivostok

Wow yea thats beyond my budget, was hopeing to find a way to get it over for the 1000-1200. range but probably unlikely i will find 4 or 5 other people, if it's going to be 2 or 3000 i'll probably look at just buying another bike in asia somewhere. Maybe i'll find some people, thanks for the info on the Russian contact

Pardon me, if I'm asking stupid things.. but could you not send one bike across the Pacific as LCL (= less than container load) type of seafreight? At least over here you can, and I also could, when I sent my bike from Oz back to Europe. Cost me about 700€ including everything also at the receiving end (in 2008), it took 2 months though.

Probably could get LCL but is there much traffic between west coast USA and Vladivostok ? We were stuck with our container because, as I said, we had other parties interested in sharing but they changed their plans. We did hear from another couple who got cheaper quotes (around $3000) but we never found out if they managed to actually travel for that.

Maybe look at cheap crossing to Busan in South Korea then onward to Vladivostok on the DongHae ferry - but I imagine this might be expensive as well plus a lot of hassle.

Ok I have got a full quote in from some guys on both ends (Seattle & Vladivostock) these guys are reccomended on the HUBB, they handle a lot of bikes. The TOTAL to ship 4 bikes from Seattle to Vlad will be around 6800. This is a 20ft container that can hold up to 7 bikes. This includes all charges on both ends, customs, loading & securing (no crate nessesary) port fees, agent fees insurance ETC. the base container fee was only 3600. So I got with the guys on both ends to try to get all the litte fees and added everything up so there would be no surprises. The container can hold up to 7 bikes, I figured 4 for the quote of 6800. but each additional bike will be an additional 400. For the bike specific fees but the total would be split by more people. So 4 bikes will be 1700 per person, 5 bikes 1440.pp, 6 bikes 1266.pp
The time in route will be 18-20 days it goes from Seattle to busan Korea to Vladivostock. With weekly service, let me know if any of you guys are interested! Looking to leave out sometime in May.

Calvin, Just curious, the price doesn't include you flying there? Have you looked into getting air shipped? I suspect that air ship could be faster and cheaper than sea ship? Have you looked into shipping to Japan or to S. Korea? You could take ferry from there to Vlad for roughly $400-600 including fees depending on which ferry you take.

I'm planning Vlad or Korea or Japan to west coast of USA in couple of year so would be interested to see how you come up with better price.