Hi, keen for your opinion on what the best way to get a bike shipped from USA to Australia is to potentially lower costs and avoid an import tax hit. So i can purchase a bike online from racycles.com and they’ll ship it to Australia for $275, i know people in the US who’s house i could get the bike shipped to (for about $50) and have them send it on to me via a cheaper service. Question is, what would be the cheapest service to use, i don’t really mind if it takes a few weeks to get here. Been searching on USPS, UPS and Fedex websites but have been getting some huge quotes, actually the cheapsest i’ve been quoted is about $350 which doesn’t make sense… Any ideas what the dimensions of a bike box would be?
Also what is your opinion on avoiding import tax on the bike if shipped via my friend in the US? I could ask them to list the value at under $1000, should work fine yeah?
if they can mark it on the box at $900
then suck up the shipping cost.
i got my parlee frame shipped at $900 on the customs dec, shipping fedex made running the insurance gantlet worth the risk… there is no way i’d have something shipped USPS and under insured, you have no idea where it is and they don’t take good care of things…
a company gets way better rates than the public with shipping…
try and get it marked down and rest easy knowing its going to get here quickly and in one piece.
find one that allows you to fill out your own custom form and then you can declare the value to be whatever you want… if you get pulled up for it, its not the seller who gets in trouble its you (which means places who refuse to declare a lower price are covered).
i think its about 200-300bucks if you do it that way.
blakey or someone who has done it more often can give you more details
I used shipito for my Litespeed, filled in my own customs form (under a grand = no tax), cost me $250ish from memory to ship it here with Fedex.(They give accurate shipping quotes on the shipito website based on the dimensions and weight of the box)
Shipito were the best of the mail forwarders I found, they let you fill in your own customs paperwork, they will hold your items for a week until you tell them to ship (free of charge) and they also offer a service where they opened the box and took photos of all the parts from me, so I could make sure it was all there, cost a little bit extra but worth it as I had to claim for a busted wheel.
Really happy with their service and have recommended them to several people since.
^Just had a complete 29er shipped from a bikeshop in Portland. Cost me $650 USD in set with UPS. When it arrived the bike was really well packed in a double frame box. The wheels shipped separately in two wheel boxes which were taped together. The packing was somewhat excessive but it got here in one piece. I guess the packages were 70 x 130 x 25 cm & 70 x 70 x 35cm.
By comparison, when I bought another 26er dualie from Melbourne it was shipped together with wheels and everything in a double frame box (about 70 x 130 x 30cm).
But generally when I’ve shipped bikes between UK - Australia - NZ. I’ve generally done this in a regular bike box which is 103 x 170 x 20cm (most of this shipping quotes I got from the US for this size were around $600-700 USD).
I use a company called Shipville to get my goods from the US. I’m sure they can help you out in this matter.
I have used a few other companies for this service, but I found Shipville to be the best. Hope this helped.
Geez Blakey, just cos someone digs up a 5 year old thread and signs up to an obscure fixie forum forum to reply to it doesn’t automatically mean they’re trying to sell something.
I’m putting the feelers out to see if someone might be able to help me get a bike from the USA to Australia. Is anyone travelling there and able to check in a bike with their luggage?
Freight and import duty is probably going to be over $800, so I’d like to reduce that if possible.
I could use Shipito or another freight forwarder, but I’d rather put those $$ towards an FOA member instead, if possible. I’m happy to reimburse all the extra costs plus $200 or so for the inconvenience.
Dredge: anyone use bikeflights to send a purchase from/to Aus?
Found a frame I want in Cali, don’t come up often, seller says USPS won’t touch it cause it’s too big. I’m looking at all the others (shipito, viabox, bikeflights).
FWIW I used Bikeflights for sending BigAdz bike from Seattle to Montana…it was super easy and seemed super legit.
If you’re willing to pay for international shipping then I recommend them.
Internal USA costs are pretty damn good with Bikeflights which is nice.
if its just a frame and it can be packed smallish you could get it drop shipped using auspost, i’ve used them a couple of times (first on a wheelset/buildkit and second on some tools) and they’re pretty good.
Hey Paul, for me to give you a closer look at the shipping costs, you would need the dimensions along with the weight to be using a shipping calculator effectively. Perhaps if you contact the retailer then you might be able to get some details.
