Trying to ship wheels overseas.
 

I am trying to ship wheels to Taiwan but the USPS is charging 300+ bucks and UPS is charging 400 bucks standard air. Why does it cost this much? How do you guys usually ship over seas?

Thanks

Taiwan and other countries like Australia, have size limits that a wheel or a frame box far exceeds. A 2 wheel box usually comes in around 100-105 total inches and the limit to these countries is 79.

Some ebay sellers will get around this by purchasing the postage online and entering false box dimensions that are under 79 inches. They are betting that no one in the chain will actually check. Doing this brings the postage down to a reasonable level - about $65-70 to Taiwan and it usually works.

How do I know? I did it myself on more than a dozen shipments with success on all of them. Then I had one get held up. Cost me a ton in both cash and time to rectify. Now, I won't do it.

55/Rad

Damn, how about sea shipment?

I just sold a road bike frame on ebay to a buyer from Australia. I wasn't expecting a foreign buyer so it took a bit of time to find the right way to ship it. The usual carriers (UPS, Fedex, USPS) wanted over $700 to ship it!

I found a website Bike Flights (google it) and when I ran quotes there it was under $400. I pointed the buyer to that site and he was able to set up the shipping through them, and pay them himself, and email me a .pdf shipping label for Fedex. I just dropped the box off at Fedex. Easy.
As of my last check on the shipment it is in Australia now and still going through customs (I only shipped it off last week).

I noticed Bike Flights also ships wheels. You might check it out.

I will certainly look at this service the next time I ship a bike or frame, even domestically.

That is still a bit expensive, does anyone have any information on sea shipment? I might even just take that chance of using a false box size for shipping.

The cheapest legitimate shipping to countries with size restrictions I've found is IPS Parcel. These folks ship a ton of stuff worldwide, usually through DHL and pass the savings on. A frame to Australia was around $300.

Try ship the wheels via USPS express mail method, the dimension limit is 108in, usually you can get away with few inch more.

What is the price range for this? Thanks

$432 from Oregon. USPS is not an inexpensive option.

Oh I used IPS Parcel and with the dimentions of 25x25x10 9lbs, it will cost around 170 bucks. Not bad compared to 300 or 400. Should I just do this and forget about sea shipment? I am just worried that the longer the shipping duration, the more change that the wheels maybe damaged plus the longer lag time. I think sea shipment is 4 weeks.

I'm telling you IPS is da-bomb. I've used them more than a dozen times without any issues. And they are fast.

I think this is what I am going to do since it is pretty cheap. Since my package is 25x25x10 9lbs, how low do you think I can go to juice the system? I was thinking 20x20x8 9lbs? Is that too risky? BTW, via the IPS site it will be shipped via DHL.

Are you planning on flying out to Taiwan yourself anytime soon? Not realistic if you are shipping because of ebay or whatever...

I went to Hong Kong and packed complete bike (pika packwords bag) and wheels. Checked luggage. No charge

Yep, got my carbon wheels from Taiwan, did not know that is where they were coming from. No mention of shipping cost in the order.
Once the transaction was done it was $150 for 2 night from Taiwan via DHL.

Taiwan to U.S. is usually cheaper than U.S. to Taiwan.

This is interesting, What probably is messing you up are the dimensions, priority international girth stuff for taiwan is 79 inches. Probably u have like 90 something.

The only way to be able to make it for cheap is if you take the wheels appart, in a rim box u can put the 2 rims and the spokes and in another tiny box the hubs. u need a box like 25x25x2 inches (80 bucks) , a 25x25x3 inches will be too big. Since this it wont happen, hope you find a good solution...

Cheers

I bought my wheels from a builder in the US. He sent each wheel seperately and made sure it was on the lowest possible square inch. I think I paid about $A100 all up via USPS.

After doing this for a while I ship wheels separately and I do it in 26x26x6 boxes. This is right on the dimensional weight limit domestically and when shipping overseas I ship USPS. I have been getting away with taping 2 of the boxes together. India for like $70. Canada - same. Crazy. Australia - I almost don't even both quoting anymore.

it's not gonna be $432, I don't know where you get the price from. here is how it works

2 wheels, say you will ship 2 Ksyrium SL weight 4 lbs, total shipping weight 5 lbs.

shipping box dimension 26 L 26 W 8 H, that is 2x26=52, 2x8=16, 52+16=68, Plus 26 ( longest lenth of the box)
total shipping size is 94 inch, under the 108 EMS limit.

shipping cost to Taiwan from San Francisco for this package is $48.76.

Welcome to our world! It's not worth it for us to order anything from North America ... the shipping is way too expensive.

However, we can get things with free shipping from the UK. :)