[tigerlily]

Can anyone give me a ballpark on a 20 foot container from the US (West coast, if possible) to Welly or Auckland? I've not seen prices and I didn't get a call back from the one shipper I tried so far.

[jamilliah]

The same thing i was saying.there isnt that many quote prices here for people in the US....we just got our three quotes from three companies...sea and air.meyers moving and vanlines...im here in brooklyn ny.....we live in a three bedroom apartment on the 4th floor...with huge amounts of clothing..lots of pottery and books...alot of stuff already in boxes like lawn furniture etc that we bought and never opened....and some knick knacks...the furniture that we are bringing are china cabinet....three seat sofa.....2 chest of draws..and lboxes with things we bought like pots and pans etc..so this should give you an idea what we are bringing up.. from 2 companies we got an estimate of $7,750......from the third $8,500 for 20ft ...$10,000 for 40 ft.as this company wasnt sure on which it could fit......
we ended up with sea and air international because.they are very professional and provide you with info booklets and email testimonials etc........we chose them because they went the extra mile on professionalism..and curtesy..plus their company is well known...with hosiptals art companys etc..
so our estimate is $7,750....guranteed price..when you do accept them.......you have to put down a deposit of $1,000.and they take it from there...they said it will take one day to pack up everything...the final cost will be on moving day.when they see just how much space it takes up..the price will go down if it is less space...the price will stay the same at the guranteed price if not...
hope this helps*

bye bye

[Ana&Steve]

I've priced some but still a ways off from hiring anyone...UPakWeShip quoted me $3500US but you only have 2 hours to pack and stabilize your own container. The "full service" companies were all about $7000US. These were all for a 20ft, and w/o anyone coming to the house, just doing the online work sheets. I'm looking forward to wanderingoregonian's DYI shipping story, once the container arrives!

[Oregonkiwi]

Auskiwi recently shipped a 20 ft container from Oregon to Auckland, maybe try PMing her?

[Park City Partner]

We used Allied and I wouldn't recommend them. I think I have tried to forget everything associated with them but we had them pack our house in Park City UT, load a 20 ft. container, bought about 2k of insurance (I think) and unload in Auckland. We had 7,000 lbs. The whole thing was about 10k including the insurance...hope that helps....

[wanderingoregonian]

Hi there Tigerlily! Does door-to-door do international? I used them from Boston to Portland (they're based in Seattle) and they were lovely to work with! www.doortodoor.com my internet cap has been reached or I'd look myself:)

[Malay-Coopers]

For those who have shipped from US to NZ, was it worth the cost to move the furniture compared to what is would cost to replace it?

[jen]

Hi there - we just shipped at 20 ft container from Santa Barbara, CA to Wellington for around $9000. We didn't take out insurance as there were so many exclusions we felt it wasn't worth the high cost. We got charged extra for weighing so much (lots of wine, very heavy!) That included packing and unpacking/hauling away packing materials at the NZ end.

We used Crown and they were great; their crew wrapped everything so well we only broke one bowl and a wooden shelf got broken on one side from being put under something. Their appraiser DID under-estimate how much space we'd need, though so we had to give away/leave some things very last minute as we didn't quite fit in the 20 ft. The container arrived 2 weeks early, quite a surprise.

Jen

[Malay-Coopers]

We just got a reasonable quote from Portland, Maine to Wellington for a 20 ft container: $6730 US. A local company, Bisson, is packing us up and Rainer out of WA will do the actual shipping. We don't have much except furniture e.g couches, beds, tables, lamps, framed wall pictures, and lots of books. We are hoping to take all of our clothing on the plane but that may just be a pipe dream!

[khhill]

We shipped a less than full container load, but to add to the last post, we used Rainier without problems. They're based out of WA but we dropped our stuff off at their Los Angeles depot.

[jess]

We were quoted $14,000 from Crown for a 40 foot and I think it was around $12,000 for the 20' container. That's full service with them taking care of packing everything. Trans Global (http://www.transglobalmoving.com/) quoted us about $6000 for a 20' container in 2005, based on container size not weight (so no penalties for being extra heavy). That was self packed, and then they sent two guys to load it directly into our container which was then sent on to the dock.

We went with Trans Global and only had one piece of glass in a picture frame broken. Trans Global does the paperwork and then passes you on to Global Ocean Freight (http://www.global-oc.com/), the actual shipper. Everything was fine except that they use Worldwide Movers on this end (or did for our Wellignton port arrival), and they were very unpleasant. Also one of the ship owners along the way thought they had not been paid, so they held up our container at port. I went to Trans Global for help, but actually ended up getting most of my help from Global Ocean Freight. (I don't know if you can sign a contract directly with GOF).

Based on how we filled out the online form Trans Global thought we needed the 40' container so we paid $1000 more for it, but we only filled it half way. Of course, it's really hard to know until the container gets there.

One small thing. When we were done they said we needed to put a padlock on our container but did not provide one. The driver kindly waited for us to go to the hardware store for one, because he said otherwise, our unlocked container would be vulnerable to theft at every stop.


Malay-Coopers - Yes I think it was worth it, because you can get better furniture for less money in the US. It would have cost us so much to buy it here.

[jess]

:o Sorry, now that I think about it I remember the Crown quote was for $12,000 not $14,000 based on weight, and that was for what we actually had (they came to the house and looked at everything) and not for a particular container size. They were going to pack everything for that price but it did not include insurance.

[xanctus]

Malay-cooper,
Anything you can possibly bring from the states (exclude the electronic stuffs) is worth of bringing. However, make sure your container is big enough to carry all those furnitures.

Stuffs like sport shoes, clothings, other regular stuffs are also worth to be shipped as in US is lot cheaper!

[wanderingoregonian]

speaking of people on this end.. I have a very straightforward pleasant experience with Mainfriend/owens. NOt that you have much say with who your moving company ends up subcontracting with, but upakweship appeared to contract with Carotrans and then Mainfreight for our shipment and they were all very professional and pleasant to deal with in our limited experience.... and in my mind limited interaction is probably a good thing because it means things went according to plan!!!

[tigerlily]

Nope, Door to Door doesn't do internationals. But I've just emailed Ranier directly to see if I can go with them without any other middlemen. We are fairly close to Seattle, so we could drive it there ourselves if we had to. Gosh, this whole process is looking ugly!

[Howie]

We used Rainier to ship part of a container from NJ to Auckland. It took 3 months to arrive but nothing was broken and they were good to deal with and I would recommend them.

[tigerlily]

Thanks all for the good advice. Howie, how are you doing?

[UpNorthMum]

I'm sure I missed this in there, but how big are the houses that you guys are shipping over? All the quotes I've had were between $3,000 and $4,000 (we're also talking USD, right?). However, we aren't bringing most of our furniture because it all sucks anyway. ;) We are only bringing our kitchen table and chairs, a double bed frame (mattress is old), a dresser, desk, and maybe our king size bed. The kids will get new beds there. Our living room furniture will be happily given away to whatever willing soul will take it. Our house still looks like a college apartment.

After we purge our clothing, we'll have that, some sentimental things like pictures, about half our books, dishes, non-electronic kitchen stuff, and kids toys. All in all it seems like we'll be bringing the fixings for a one-bedroom apt, minus living room. We have so much stuff to get rid of in our three-bedroom house!

[Rizak]

Very similar numbers. My quote includes door to door and packing. Ottawa to Auckland. Just a shade under CDN$15,000. That's for a forty footer. Our agent thinks that our items are just a bit too much for a twenty.

[Rizak]

Very similar numbers. My quote includes door to door and packing. Ottawa to Auckland. Just a shade under CDN$15,000. That's for a forty footer. Our agent thinks that our items are just a bit too much for a twenty.

We've got a couple of couches, a queen-sized bed, a couple of armoires, half a dozen dressers, a few trunks, clothes, kitchen, books, bikes, etc.

[jen]

Our quote upthread was for the contents of a 1,000 square foot house, plus another 25 or so boxes of books/wine from the garage. We had our clothes plus things that would be hard to replace like books, photos, artwork, and THOUSANDS of cds my husband's collected (*sigh*) so we figured we might as well go for it and take the furniture and the whole kaboodle.

We had a garage sale and posted stuff on freecycle/craigslist for giveaway, but it still added up!