Getting the bike back to Blighty

Shipping options are a very serious consideration when getting a bike to the UK from America and it really pays to look in depth at your options. You get exactly what you pay for here!

If your recent purchase is going to be hurled into a container of closely packed bikes the chances are it’s going to get damaged and badly so; cheap shipping is exactly that. Also, the location of the bike can be a huge element in the cost of transportation. One shipping option that looked potentially attractive at £500 to the UK necessitated me getting the Apache from Tennessee up to the southern shores of The Great Lakes for onward transportation. However, when you get quotes of around $800 for those 740-odd miles it’s not the greatest deal in the world. My Yamaha CS3C was very near to those same lakes but in Canada, so the onward transport costs there were negligible. Ditto my erstwhile, 1967, 350cc Yamaha YR1 which only had to be moved some 40 miles to the docks in California. Ringing around or enquiring via the web divvied up figures for sea freight ranging from £700 to £1200. Each option still requires me to pay extra to get the bike to an East Coast sea port and the best figure for that I’ve had is $595, so not exactly cheap.

There’s also the additional concern of damage in transit and as more than one shipper has told me: “You won’t get an American trucker to take ownership or responsibility for any damage to your bike even though it’s on their truck!” Not exactly a comforting thought then!

One of the safest, if less orthodox, options is to get the bike crated up. Some shippers insist on this while others won’t touch a boxed up bike. And when the bike finally lands here in the UK you’ll generally only have a limited time for it to remain in storage before you’ll be running up a bill. I’m still weighing up my options, but as the man said: “No one said it was easy or cost-effective.”