Shipping across the country
Someone in Florida wants to buy my wing. Now I live in Idaho. Is there a way to safely ship a wing all the way from Idaho to Florida?
Someone in Florida wants to buy my wing. Now I live in Idaho. Is there a way to safely ship a wing all the way from Idaho to Florida?
Comments
yes I just shipped a wing and ATF to conn. just crated everything and called a trucking company.
I had good luck getting my trike shipped across country with Uship.com. they allow people to bid on your load.
I had bad luck shipping a wing to Florida several years ago:
http://alltrikes.com/elgg/pages/view/3581/shipping-a-trikeglider#comment_2371
I boxed my wing and helped load it into a freight truck from my house- The truck was filled with tons of varied UPS-sized boxes- My 18 foot box fit in like a sore thumb.
Ken shipped his wing with a trike, so it went in an auto carrier alongside his trike. Given basically one-on-one attention. Mine was an odd, upsetting box among many hundreds or thousands. ... but that's the way most HG wings are shipped. You pays your money and you takes your chances--- get insurance!!
Actually my wing wasn't shipped it came from XCtriker. Ole had a wing shipped with these guys though
Oh, yeah, Duh, how could I forget that? I just remember all the packing and searching for shippers we did in Florida. But, Henry carried my iXess over to you in his trailer from my hangar.
IMHO, Crates are for Forklifts to Poke Holes into! Back in my school days, I used to work on a loading dock and ran a shipping dept. for a lighting company. The drivers were good teachers at crating stuff for shipment. They taught me, if a crate looks bullet proof, it gets handled as such. So, If you crate and go with the traditional shipper, one truck picks it up. Then it gets unloaded at a warehouse and probably moved around a few more times as they gather the whole load. Then it gets packed and stuffed in a Long-Haul truck. Then the process repeats at the delivery end. This is 5-6 chances for a forklift jockey to ruin the day. All forklift opps pride themselves in deftly nudging pallets and crates around, just ask one. Every time they do, is a chance for disaster. Next let's not forget... About fuel? if you build a crate worth anything, you're going to double the weight, and we know those costs very well.
Best solution is to find a classic car shipper. They are used to delivering "door to door" and most drivers are happy to carry a hundred extra pounds of weight if it's an easy load. The load is covered and they don't juggle your stuff from truck to truck. A wing can easily be tied to the floor under a car and travel in style. No crate, just a soft package that should be treated with kid gloves.
@Dugsmith-- I think this is exactly what and why happened to my wing. Thanks for spelling it all out. I fully agree with your assessment & cure. One of those Forklift wizards "deftly " (as you put it) BASHED-in the end of my wing shipping box (and I used a factory wing box with quadruple layer cardboard and wood ends)-- this caused the tip wands at the trailing edge of the wing to get ripped from their sockets in the carbon fiber racing wing I was shipping. Total bummer-- no flying it at the destination I met it at. Fought with the insurance to pay for at least some of it (glad I insured it, but they almost didn't pay).