On 1/17/15 9:45 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
On 01/17/2015 11:18 AM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
For palletized freight, I've used
FreightQuote (a broker) a few times to
ship larger computer purchases. Since I live on a rough, unpaved rural
road, I specified that I'd pick up from the local terminal of whatever
shipper I selected (based on price). I live fairly close to Ontario, CA,
which is a major shipping hub, so I get lots of competitive quotes
instead of being stuck with one trucking company with a local terminal.
Very roughly, I've generally spent around $300 to move a pallet across
the country.
I haven't tried any "white glove" or "padded van" shippers yet.
I
learned of their existence back when I was contemplating getting a
VAX-11/780. I ended up getting a nice, fits-on-two-pallets 11/730 system
instead. :)
That's a big problem I've found with trying to work out how to ship
the part of my collection that's still in the UK to the US - UK
shippers seem to go extremely quiet when they find out that I live
miles inland in the middle of nowhere; they can take on getting stuff
to a sea port, but that doesn't really help when it's still more than
a thousand miles from the desired destination.
I have a nasty feeling that I'll have to go with one of the "white
glove" companies at many times the cost, just because they'll be the
only ones who will handle the full journey. The other option would be
to split it, dealing with one company for the overseas freight,
another to get my stuff somewhere vaguely-close, then to hire a van
and do the last few hundred miles myself - but even thinking about the
logistics of that (such that stuff isn't sitting around for any length
of time, which probably involves huge fines) gives me a headache!
Having moved my entire collection this past year (by myself with help
from friends), I can attest to having stuff palletized
makes the job a
whole lot easier. The only things that I didn't palletize
where the big
(heavy) items that already had casters (of sorts). In the end I think I
moved 30 pallets. Here in the US they're not particularly expensive. I
found a local manufacturer of pallets and was able to get them for < $6
each. I would load 8-10 on my truck to take them to where I was
packaging everything. Along the way I had also acquired a pallet jack
so it wasn't hard to move stuff around (even with 1000-1500lbs of stuff
on a pallet). All the "small" stuff was wrapped and put into boxes and
those boxes were put on the pallet. Once a pallet was sufficiently
"full", I used shipping strapping to secure everything and then wrapped
everything in "shrink wrap". I used the plastic strapping with a manual
tool but for really heavy loads, you probably want to use steel and a
much more expensive tensioner and crimper.
Loading and unloading the truck once everything was palletized was a breeze.
The trick with palletizing heavier gear is getting it on/off the
pallet. The biggest stuff I put on a pallet were my Symbolics 3640s.
For those I used my equipment lift (sort of a hand operated fork lift).
Also all of my loose RK05, RL01/2 and Fujitsu Eagles were all loaded on
pallets this way. Here are some pictures of the stuff after I've moved
it into my new shop but still on the pallets:
http://www.shiresoft.com/new-shop/Shiresoft/Almost_moved.html. By the
time I was done, the entire downstairs of the new shop was filled with
pallets...then I started to unpack. ;-)
However, getting back to the original question. I've shipped stuff with
both "white glove" movers and just regular freight companies. I've had
reasonable success with both. It all depends upon what you're moving
and how it's packed for shipping. If you don't have it packed/packaged,
then "white glove" is the way to go especially if it's just "big
stuff". However, if you have lots of "little" stuff that you can pack
into boxes, then putting them on a pallet and just using freight is
probably cheaper.
TTFN - Guy