Actually, you may not save quite as much as you think doing it yourself when all's said and done. It's still a fair bit cheaper to DIY tho, lemme see what I can remember.
First, I assume you are going to get crates made. Shop around, the places that have a web presence are $$$! I was lucky to get put onto a place that normally does business stuff, but they were nice people and didn't mind doing a personal shipment. They built the crates and let me take my stuff there myself to load it into the crates. Saved me some $$ trying to get a forklift and truck around to my place to pick up loaded crates
Some countries require crates to be certified free of borers. Australia does anyway, other countries are probably less picky.
I paid 200 each for 38x38x46" heat-treated crates with skids (internal dimensions). It was painful to give 'em away at this end, but there wasn't much else I could do with 'em
Same with the shipping company, ask around to get recommendations.
When I got my stuff to the crate-builder, the guy asked me if I had everything packed in vapor barrier bags. Uhhhh... what?? (I said..) It turns out that if the container with your stuff in it gets put on the deck of the ship, it can get a load of saltwater in it -- so your stuff better be completely moisture-proof. When I got the crates, only one of them had got wet, on one corner. Still, it pays to be safe with electronics, so you might want to check into this. I ended up having them build a vapor barrier bag right on the inside of the crate. It's kind of a silver thing, which is sealed with a heating... um thing. Another $45 per crate
No motor vehicles? Good, cuz that a whole 'nother level of complications
Ah, some shipping companies won't insure personal effects. I guess when you get a mover to do it, they do the insurance, but if you go direct to a freight forwarder they may not want to know about it. It turned out I could have insured my stuff but I ended up shipping it uninsured, the shipping guy obviously thought the insurance was a waste of $ (and it was quite a bit).
Some options. After doing this, I came to the conclusion that for moving overseas it's more optimal to either have a little stuff or a lot of stuff. You can ship a container for the same price as about a third of its cubic footage when you use LCL (less than container load). So if you have a car or a grand piano you wouldn't mind keeping, or for that matter nice furniture, look into that. The other end of the scale is where you just carry and/or post stuff to yourself. If you don't have anything that can't be fit into a reasonable size box and weighs less then 44 pounds... this is certainly an option. Quite seriously, when you use the post office, they deliver it to your door (or to your suburb anyway), and coming into Australia anyway it's under the Customs radar....
Anyway, that brings me to collecting your stuff at the other end. First hard lesson: make sure that you know exactly *when* your stuff is arriving. If you don't collect it fast, they charge you storage fees, I got hit with an extra $350 for being two days late. Take a flatbed truck that's large enough to pick up everything in one go, the guys working at the LCL depot are not exactly interested in having a nice chat about what you would like to do today and what you would like to do tomorrow.
Speaking of charges... apart from my extra bonus charge just mentioned, I had to pay duty (not too much, fortunately), port fees, truck rental, and storage rental (for a week while I unpacked the crates). I did customs clearance myself, otherwise there would have been another few hundred for that. Bear in mind that sea freight is charged by volume, while the post office goes by weight. Quite seriously, if I had ditched the heavy stuff like the vintage amps, transformers, and LPs, it may have actually been cheaper to just post the stuff to myself. It certainly would have been less stressfull... heh...
On the sending end, you're up for packing material, crates, freight charges, insurance (maybe), truck rental moving the stuff to whereever it gets packed.
If you search on the web you'll see some places that have a palletization type of service. This is where you take your stuff there, dump it on a pallet and shrink wrap it. I thought about this but the thought of a forklift driver dumping a ton of something on top of my gear killed that pretty quick.
Hm, well hope that helps, I don't remember too much else. Check into the incoming customs regulations, I had to remove shoes and camping equipment from the crates at the last minute because they had to be washed otherwise my whole shipment might have got stuck in customs quarantine. Maybe this is just an Australia thing.
Let me know how you go, I'm interested to hear
.
JohnR
