Anyone shipped motorcycle before?

I may need to, but need a decent company in which to deal with. Does ups do it, or do I have to use someone else>?

 

I'm about to ship a bike for the third time and have had a myriad of experiences, most of them good. First the bad news; this isn't a good time to be shipping anything because of diesel fuel costs. Now the good news, I'm doing business with JC Transport who is bringing a bike up to Colorado from Miami, FL. After some exhaustive research I found this company and have been very impressed with them. They offer door to door handling which means they do not charge extra to do residential pickup and delivery like most other MC shippers.

Check out their web site and do some digging. You'll find a price & region matrix showing you how much it will cost.

FYI: I shipped a bike via Federal Transport (a subsidiary of Allied Van Lines) back in January of 2005. The bike was picked up at the owner's house and that cost me $75 extra then hauled to the local Ducati dealer. This service cost me $635 to have it shipped from Birmingham, AL.

My latest purchase is en route as I write this. Federal Transport quoted me $998 and that price would have required the seller to ride the bike 20 miles to his BMW dealer for holding, the bike would have then been shipped to my BMW dealer. I almost went with them because they'd done well for me before but I decided to do some searching and found JC Transport. Their quote is $725 to my door from the seller's home. That's a savings of $273. Both carriers palletize your bike, JC throws in a bike cover that's yours to keep afterwards.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with either company nor do I have a financial interest in these firms.

The lone bad experience I had was when a dealer shipped a bike using a regular freight company. It took almost three weeks to get my bike and it was interlined (offloaded then reloaded onto another truck) five times before it got to my house. I paid $900 for this service in 2002. The bike arrived in good shape but the final delivery driver almost dropped it from his tailgate. He didn't wait for me to uncrate and inspect the bike and told me to file a claim if anything was broken. I can only imagine what kind of nightmare it would have been trying to file a fright claim with those guys (HVH Transport).

It comes down to this; there are a lot of companies that will haul your bike but you get what you pay for. Make sure they put it on a pallet and haul it in an enclosed truck and make sure that if necessary you buy extra insurance.

Good luck!



Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info bud, I am looking at about $730 to have a bike picked up at my door and dropped at theirs so that seems fair.