Shipping a bike

[Bikechic]

How much do y'all think it would cost to ship a bike? and HOw would you ship one?
Thanks

[Wendy]

I'm sure it depends on distance, but bike shops around here (New York) will box a bike for $30 to $40. You can then take it to UPS and ship it (I'm guessing it would be $75 to go across the country). Or there are specialized companies that ship bikes, but I think they charge a lot more.

[Grog]

My bikes are shipping coast to Coast (Montreal to Vancouver) next week. I'm not paying the bill but I know my bike shop charges 15$ each to box them and they're being shipped by Purolator... Should take 7-10 days. I was to ship just one (commuter) and fly with the other (road bike) but my boss offered to take care of it and frankly I'm pretty glad he is!! The bikes will be shipped to some bike shop close to my residence in Vancouver and I'll go fetch them there, reassembled. Ain't that cool?

[Pedal Wench]

Are you sure you wanna hear this???

FedEx Ground, which is a very different company than FedEx Air lost my boyfriend's bike for about two weeks. Told him to just file a claim, the bike was gone. When it did turn up, his front brake was destroyed. My bike had some damage with them, and it's been about 4 weeks of fighting to get my claim settled.

Next time my boyfriend needed to ship a bike, he went with UPS. They only lost it for two days, but then were very accomodating about delivering it - they would have meet me wherever I wanted to make sure I got it as quickly as possible. This time, it was just his frame. He checked his wheels and the rest of the components with Delta, and they were just fine.

Your mileage may vary....

[gretassister]

Whenever you ship things there's the chance it will be lost. I suggest heavily insuring your bike when you ship it.

[skibum]

I guess I've been lucky. I've shipped my bike a couple of times using Fedex Ground and it's all gone very smoothly. It arrived on the estimated date in perfect condition. I found that Fedex Ground was less expensive than UPS. It cost around $30 from Atlanta to Colorado and $40 from Atlanta to California.

[DeniseGoldberg]

On my first tour with my own bike I shipped my bike via UPS. As I remember, shipping the bike at the time cost less than paying the excess baggage fee on the airline. I really did it for another reason though. While I had taken some classes at my LBS, and I did pack the bike for shipping (with a mechanic looking over my shoulder), I decided that I didn't want to deal with the reassembly on my own - so I shipped it ahead to a bike shop and paid them to reassemble it for me. I have taken other trips with a diamond-frame bike and checked the bike as baggage, paying the excess baggage fee. And now that I travel on a Bike Friday that packs into a suitcase that counts as regular luggage, my bike goes on the plane with me.

If you're traveling within the United States and you're going to check a bike as baggage, I believe that all of the airlines are charging excess baggage fees for bikes. I'm not sure, but I think that some international carriers include a bike within the allowed checked baggage limit. I did find a site with a list of fees for excess baggage for travel within the US - I don't know how up-to-date it is, but it looks like a good starting point: http://www.bestfares.com/travel/desk....asp?id=150111.

No matter how you ship it, stuff sometimes gets lost or delayed, so you definitely should make sure that it's insured. If you use a reputable carrier (like UPS or Fed-EX or others like them) you shouldn't have a problem. I'd recommend calling ahead and getting some shipping prices for comparison purposes.

--- Denise

[Pedal Wench]

Whenever you ship things there's the chance it will be lost. I suggest heavily insuring your bike when you ship it.

And make sure you keep proof that you have said insurance. Part of my hassle right now is that FedEx says that there wasn't any insurance on my bike, while I know I had $4000 of insurance. Pretty frightening to think that if they lost my bike that I would only get a check for $100. Reminds me - I better call today to see how the process is going.

The cost for me to ship from Atlanta to Colorado was about $75, but that was with a lot of insurance with DHL, and I used an AirCaddy box, which is huge, but pretty tough. I'm not sure what would be the best solution. I like the idea of taking it on the airplane, but if any of you have ever had lost baggage, you know that they don't have any way of tracking a package. You have to basically wait for it to get to the wrong airport, have someone say, "Oh, this doesn't belong here" and get it back to the proper location. If I was going on a non-stop flight, I might do it. Also, the airlines don't have that same mentality as the shipping co.'s that the more stuff you can cram into a space, and the faster you can cram it, the better. The problem I have with the airline is that with the new TSA rules, no matter how well you pack it, they will/might/should/could open the box, and you have no control over how they repack it. I've heard nightmares about people watching them throw their bikes onto a table to inspect it, or just throwing everything back into the shipping box without the padding and stuff. But, the shipping companies are cheaper, and you can track the package. That only goes so far though. They knew my BF's bike had gotten to Denver, but after that, for two weeks, they had no clue where it was. Then, one day, it showed up.
Wow. Long post. Sorry. One thing - go to Home Depot and get pipe insulation - long tubes of foam and wrap it around every single inch of your frame. That saved me from a lot more damage.

[SadieKate]

This is what I wrote following our trup in June. Also, check the www.velonews.com website for Bob Mionske's "Legally Speaking" column. He wrote a good one on insurance when shipping bikes.

We shipped our bikes, out via UPS and back via Fed-Ex. Depending on the value of your bike and whether you do the packing or have a shop do it, budget between $40-70 each way for shipping. For the return we had to take our boxed bikes to a box store so we may have been charged a premium. Now that I know better, we may have been able to print labels at home ahead of time. Some bike shops will ship for you and some won't. First time out, we learned a lot.

Bicycling Mag recently printed an article on packing your own bike. The shops will charge $20-25 for this but I'm going to take a photo of my packed bike when it returns for future reference. From reading I've done, Fed-Ex and UPS are less likely to damage bikes than the airlines and have better insurance.