On 6/11/07, Mike Ford <mikeford at socal.rr.com> wrote:
I'm looking at LCL oceanic shipping, its Less than
Container Load,
Interesting service... if I had an acceptable port nearby (Toledo?
Cleveland?), I'd consider that for shipping things to/from
Christchurch/Lyttleton New Zealand, or perhaps from Mongolia (but the
Asian end might prove to be complicated to arrange).
It does tend to be SLOW, as in couple weeks transit,
with a month or
more of sitting on a dock at either end.
Not as slow as waiting for end-of-the-season parcel mail to get from
the South Pole to the States. If I mail myself a 20lb package on,
say, 1 Feb, I won't see it at home for a couple of months (it has to
wait for the once-a-year cargo vessel to get to McMurdo, departing
around 14 Feb, then back to California, where it is unloaded, the mail
sent on to SFO, then across the U.S). The wait is even longer if you
miss the postal deadline - try off-continent around Halloween, to
arrive around Thanksgiving.
LCL sounds dandy compared to some of the options I've dealt with. If
anyone does get far enough along in the process to evaluate it, I'd
like to learn more.
-ethan