Help in Sausalito
 

edit 02Mar09 - to avoid harmful misunderstanding, my original request below is not a rant on Mike's Bikes. I can see a possible misinterpretaion due to the proximity of the word "nightmare" and "Mike's Bikes" but the potential connection is not the intended one. All Mike's Bikes has done is try to help me get this bike home. They allowed the prior owner to drop off and followed my request to box up in two boxes because it came with an extra seat. I just had no idea one of the boxes would be over the UPS limit nor that they would be unable to weigh the package. The nightmare word is just coming from my stress of looking for this particular bike used for 18 months at a price I could afford, suddenly finding the right deal, but not being able to get it home at a reasonable cost my family would support. end edit.

Well, my bike dream is turning into a nightmare. I used Mike's Bikes at #1 Gate 6 Road to box up my new to me bike (used bike purchase over internets, I live in Indiana). No fault to Mike's but its now over the UPS inches limit and I need another way to ship, plus they can't tell me how much the package weighs.

If you live nearby, could you stop in with your bathroom scale and tell me a weight on my big box? It should only weigh about 35-40 pounds, but I need an accurate weight to find a shipping company. Don't laugh, but my box is 88 x 32 x 9 which equals 170 UPS inches (88 + two times (32+9)) versus the maximum of 165 UPS inches.

What a mess ! Please post or PM if you could help me with this.

Your box is 88 inches long?? That's 7ft 4in!! Something's wrong here.

It almost sounds like the length has been doubled already. The dimensions I can find online for bike boxes is similar to yours, except only 52-ish inches long.

Unless it's a tandem, which would make more sense. :)

Sounds like they boxed it with the wheels on...:eek:

Long wheel base recumbent

You might want to check out something like http://uship.com/ . I have never used them (or even heard of them until 5 minutes ago!) but this looks relevant.

I'll ask about the wheels on, I tried to tell them that the rear triangle even unbolts on this one to compress the load. For sure, I'll be asking them for a little help with a repack to get it under the 165 inch limit, but even then I need the weight to get a shipping label. It does have a 70 inch wheelbase, so a little bigger than 70 would make sense if they didn't unbolt, but 88 is hard to accept. If I can't get it shrunk to UPS size then I'll probably have to post and sell it without ever riding it as I'll never be able to justify freight to the rest of the family. Thanks for the tip on uship, I'll have a look.

Have you checked Fedex? I found out that Fedex Ground is a lot cheaper than UPS Ground when dealing with large item such as bikes.

Bump. Anyone? LBS reports the only scale in the building is ceiling mounted and the box still touches the floor when attached to the hook. We did agree a few days ago to take the rear wheel off and shrink the pack below UPS size if the additional labor cost could be kept low, but no report back yet of the new box size or if it was cost-effective to repack. Turns out the seller was telling the LBS to disassemble as little as possible at the same time I was telling them to take it apart as needed, and that's how we arrived at the huge box. I'm eager to have this bike home but I expect the LBS will tire of having the boxes in the shop if I can't ship, so I expect I only have a few more days or I need to turn around and sell to someone else. The u-ship site was interesting and I received a couple bids to ship, but both were twice the UPS rate and I can't really afford that on a project that is already passing the reasonable cost limit. Checked FedEx as well but at this size was almost twice UPS. Checked any other shippers I could find, but UPS continued to be the least cost at this size.

Maybe check with UPS Freight to see if they might be an option for you?

As for the weight, I'd make a educated guess and use that. If, by chance, your box is audited for weight (this is a random process) and your figure is way off, UPS will make a rate adjustment.