Shipping car parts from California - advice?

[sebhaque]

Hi all,

I've bought some goodies for my car (a cat back exhaust, some high flow cats and an intake kit) from a company based in California. I live in Bristol and the quotations I was getting were $881 door-to-door from FedEx, and $392 + unspecified brokerage fees from Schenker (to be delivered to Bristol airport).

I was wondering if, in the vast knowledge within PH, someone knew whether these rates were acceptable given the cargo, and what this "brokerage fee" actually means. I'd rather not have to deal with a powerfully-built director-type who relieves me of a thousand pounds and my V5. Alternatively if anybody here knows of a shipping company that might be able to provide a competitive quotation, or if you have a spare plane lying around, then I'd welcome those too.

Any thoughts welcome. TIA

[HD Adam]

STS Imports has regular containers from Florida to the UK. You just pay for the container space your stuff takes up.

http://www.stsimports.co.uk/

Ron Fenton is the man you want to speak to.

[Crafty_]

Russ @ R & R Hot Rods will bring it in for you. The way it works is you get the stuff shipped to New Jersey, they deal with the shipping / customs and you pick up from Luton. http://www.randrhotrodimports.co.uk/

[bungie]

Don't forget to have to pay customs plus VAT on item plus shipping costs.

[sebhaque]

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll give these guys a call tomorrow and see what they can offer.

I'm prepared to get shafted on import duty etc, unfortunately it's one of the pleasantries of ordering from overseas.

[ViperDave]

At $881 + import fees you may as well have a weekend away in California and bring it back with you. If its over size, just take a ski bag, I have checked skis numerous times and never been asked if they actually were skis in the bag.

I'm sure one of the consolidators can beat fedex though if time is not an issue, we had a complete sofa set (4 pieces) crated and shipped by air from new York for just over £1000 a few years back. At the time I was told, surface shipping is priced on volume and air freight on weight (kind of makes sense) so a bulky light item like a sofa was not much different to fly than put on a boat with the key difference being about a week transit (door to door) rather than 6 weeks plus.

[Byff]

I smashed my Lincoln Navigator door mirror, found a company selling them at a reasonable price and collect over the counter.

Nice little holiday to California, stuck the mirror in my luggage, jobs a goodun.

The wife wasn't impressed with me carrying a virtually empty case that she couldn't use for extra hairdriers, curlers, dresses, shoes etc etc....

[Crafty_]

If you have friends in the US and need to ship something big there is a very cheap way of doing it. This company : http://www.fastenal.com/ use their distribution trucks to backhaul stuff. The caveat is that the package needs to be dropped off to the local branch and picked up from a local branch at the other end.
I shipped a car bonnet that was 5' high and about the same across at its widest from Phoenix to New Jersey for $90.

the page for the shipping operation is here: http://www.fastenal.com/web/en/22/third-...455717!...

[HD Adam]

Byff said:

I smashed my Lincoln Navigator door mirror, found a company selling them at a reasonable price and collect over the counter.

Nice little holiday to California, stuck the mirror in my luggage, jobs a goodun.

The wife wasn't impressed with me carrying a virtually empty case that she couldn't use for extra hairdriers, curlers, dresses, shoes etc etc....

Quite a few years ago on our trip back from Disney World, my kids had a Plymouth Fury disc brake and caliper each in their Mickey Mouse backpacks.

Yep, they struggled