Hi.

A friend of mine is looking into the possibility of shipping a rather heavy electronic musical instrument (a 1939 Hammond Novachord) from Seattle to the UK, but doesn't know the best way to go about it. I know several people here have moved large things internationally, and was wondering if you have any advice?

The thing, boxed up, would be about 2 metres square by a metre high, and weigh perhaps 300kg.

Pca

Assuming it's not urgent, then a freight forwarder / international mover for a container part-load shipment will be the cheapest. Faster and pricier will be a dedicated 20ft container.

Definitely sea shipment is cheapest, I am shipping 1.6 cubic metres from Sydney to the UK (a single sea pallet) and it's costing about AU$500 plus unloading/clearing fees. I would expect it to cost something similar, although call around because prices do vary quite a bit. I have used Dockside Freight Services in Southampton a few times for shipping cars to the UK and they are recommended, but it might be easier to start with a company in Seattle itself since it's not something that can be just driven to a port!

Air freight would cost a lot more due to the bulk, the dimensional weight would be about 700kg (sea freight is charged purely on volume). As an example, Aus > UK is about AU$6/kg, Seattle would presumably be less, but still hugely expensive.

I picked up quite a bit of experience in this when we shipped over that pallet of lighting stuff from Rob to Rob. We used an agent called FreightQuote who helped us with the door to door shipment from Rob's Office in New York all the way to Cambridge.

If you are looking for tips, I would say take a personal interest in every step of the shipment yourself if time is o the essence, I forget the exact timescales we ran to I think it was something like 4-6 weeks and I am pretty sure it would have been much longer than that if I hadn't chased it though at each stage, ensuring the clearance paperwork was sorted before it landed in the UK saved weeks I think.

We did look at Air Shipping at one point but I think it was 10x more expensive than sea shipping on a pallet in a container.

Freight Quote were the only ones who took me seriously and gave me a realistic quote, I can dig the details out if you need them but give them a ring they are very helpful indeed.

Cheers

Cris.

Thanks for all that. I have passed the information along and he's making enquiries.

Pca