Ty0604

I've toured four times and but have never had to ship my bike back to my home. Three of my four tours I rode (in a car) back with a friend and the other I had a ride to my starting point and rode to my home.

This year will be my longest tour and I wont have a ride so I was interested in hearing peoples experiences on getting their bike back to their home after tour.

Do I check my bike on the airline (I'm flying home), have a bike shop ship it back, FedEx, UPS? Rough estimate on cost? Keeping in mind the bike will be going from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

Thanks!

Machka 

We often fly to our starting point, and home from our finishing point, with our bicycles. Or drive to a spot, park the car and ride an out-and-back or loop from there.

djb

With your P to P flight, the obvious answer is to pack it up and take it in the plane with you. The cost will depend on the airline, so get the proper info and then do Mr Google searches for packing a bike in a box.
Also look into other shipping methods that may be cheaper, that US bike shipping company I've read of on here, can't recall name, or enquire with bike stores in Maine about what they charge to box and ship to Oregon.
If you go the flight route then you can practice at home with free throwaway boxes from bike stores beforehand to get practice and perfect packing.

Most important is to pack well to avoid internal contact damage.... Mr Google..
Fork brace, derailleur brace, all stuff that you can get with disposable boxes at bike stores.
Cheers

sail

Most memorable trip home was years ago. Headed to Boston, it snowed in Vermont and water bottles froze in the cemetery I was camped. Found nearest airport (tiny) tied wheels to frame with tent lines and flew home. I felt like a cowboy with my saddle bags over shoulder and the bike made it ok, not sure airlines would be so accommodating today.
Lately been closer to home. Not as exotic as far away places but traveling on a bicycle exposes new layers of familiar country.

jargo432

I would make friends with a bike shop in Portland Or and get some help from them. Most bike shops can pack up a bike in a box 10 times better and safer than any of us for a small fee. Then I'd check how much it would cost to ship it UPS. At my LBS UPS is in there everyday and they are used to shipping bikes. I'd venture a guess that It wouldn't cost any more to send it UPS than what the airline would charge you.

indyfabz

Get a LBS to box it and check out these guys:

https://www.bikeflights.com/?gclid=C...SfEBoCS_3w_wcB

I have used them twice. They are basically a FedEx discount service for bikes. OTOH, if you are flying Southwest or other airline with a relatively low bike charge, you might just fly with it, although you may have the possible inconvenience of getting the bike to the airport.

gorshkov

It's been a while since I have shipped a bike, but when I worked at a bike shop, we always used FedEx rather than UPS because the owner of the shop maintained that UPS was likely to damage the bike. I would go with FedEx or UPS over the airline because most airplanes don't have enough room in the cargo hold to keep the box upright, and the bike is much more likely to be damaged if it is sideways and something is tossed on top of it. Also, airline baggage handlers.

If you are using AmTrak to get back home, AmTrak will ship a bike as checked luggage for cheap, and they will provide a box for you to pack it in, too.

pdlamb

Most of the time I'll put it on the back of the car and drive home. On one trip, though, I took it to a bike shop and had them disassemble and ship it. Not sure I'd do that again (it cost a lot more than I expected!), but at the time, after three months on the road, I was ready to pay someone else to do it.

raybo

I decouple it and disassemble much of it to put into a 26x26x10 box and fly it home as checked luggage. Takes 90 minutes for each assembly/disassembly.

goldleaf

Interesting. How do you achieve this? S&S coupling, a folding bike? I would LOVE to see a video of this so I could learn to do it. I am so-so mechanically but can turn a wrench as well as the average person I guess.

FBinNY 

IMO your best bet for a trip that far will be to pack it and fly home with it checked as baggage. You can have a bike shop do the packing, or scrounge an empty bike box and pack it yourself.

Shipping by UPS or Fedex can be cheaper, but with the volume surcharges may not save much, and with that much distance may cost you more.

BTW- one trick I've found to work with airlines is to use miles to upgrade to 1st class. Often the more generous baggage allowances and baggage fee waivers save me more than the difference. (my record is saving $140 with a $25 upgrade to 1st class).

Otherwise, you can compare costs by measuring a box like what you'd use and going to the UPS or Fedex sites for a rate quote (be sure to enter dimensions), then asking the airline their policy.

There are also baggage and bike forwarding services, and these can sometimes save you vs. shipping via UPS.

djb

re box volume , dimensions etc, I have read on this site that sometimes a given volume or dimensions can be a great deal less expensive with only a slight diff of box size, ie get a box at a bike store that measures X can cost , lets say 150 bucks, and another box that is X-2inches might cost $100.....so basically look into the fine print of any and all shipping methods and inform yourself. Even cutting down an existing box to fit within the cheaper price could very well be worth the time and taping up involved.

I know from experience that bike boxes from bike stores do vary in size, I suggest dropping by some stores and take a look, take a measuring tape also. Like I said, its worth doing practice runs of putting bike in a box, a good winter experiment.

You will easily spend a few hours trying diff fit methods, but good to do it when not rushed and having to get to the airport, do it months before hand and you'll have time to figure out the mistakes--and consult Mr G for various opinions.

Ty0604

Why do you think I'd have trouble getting the bike to the airport?

Ty0604

Do you remember how much it was? Roughly?

Ty0604

Thanks for the advice everyone. I emailed a few bike shops in Portland, Maine to see.

indyfabz

Depends on the airport and available ground transportation options. Could cost you and arm and a leg for a cab. The bike will have to be boxed and you'd be risking it if you counted on finding a box at the airport, so you might need a mini-van cab, assuming there are cabs wherever you will end up. (Two years ago in Missoula I waited 45 min. for a cab to pick me up at the airport.) Schlepping a boxed bike and your gear can be a PITA, even if you get a duffel and put all your stuff in it. Been there, done that, during supported tours when I have flown with the bike. Now, when I tour far away from home I make arrangements with a local shop to receive, re-assemble and tune my bike so that it's ready for me when I arrive. The shop holds my box. When I finish the tour I simply drop my gear and the end campground or motel, ride to the shop, drop off the, give them the shipping documents from Bikkeflights.com and go have a beer. To me, the convenience is worth the extra $$.

staehpj1

I have had a number of bike shops pack my bike and ship it home and generally found the cost fairly reasonable. Bike shops seem to get better rates for the shipping and shipping was typically $40-60 for a 2,000 - 3,000 mile trip. They all charged $40-60 for the packing, so total cost was typically $100 give or take a few bucks.

I most often check my bike as baggage on the way to a tour, but often have a bike shop pack and ship it home to avoid dealing with all of that in a strange town.

BTW, if you check a bike as baggage be sure to pick a bike friendly airline because they can vary pretty widely in cost for a checked bike.

indyfabz

The last couple of times I have had my bike packed it's cost around $40 for the service. If you look at bikeflight's web site you can get an estimation of what shipping will cost if you have the origin and destination zip codes, bike box dimensions and weight. In June I shipped from Philly to Rapid City, SD for $47 based on an estimated weight of 60 lbs. That included the $5 surcharge for pick up at a LBS. Shipping time was 4 days and that included $1,400 of insurance. In 2014, Philly to Missoula at 70 lbs. was around $76 dollars.

Doug64

This is a good point.

We shipped our bikes from Michigan to Oregon. My wife's 47 cm bike, fit the smaller size, and shipped Fedex for right at $67. My 58 cm bike would not fit in the smaller box and the extra 2" cost me $165 to ship it.

We also shipped our bikes back to Oregon from Boston by UPS at about $150/ bike.

Mostly, we just bite the bullet, and transport our bikes with is on the plane. Packing a bike isn't rocket science, but it is easier when flying from home to the start. It is a lot easier to collect the boxes, packing material, etc at home rather than running around a strange place looking for it. A good compromise might be to have a shop pack the bike, even if you are flying with it.

As mentioned above, getting your boxed bike to the airport can be a challenge.

Ty0604

That sounds fair. I have $200 put aside for getting my bike back to Oregon. I'd rather have more insurance than $1400 though. I wonder if you can pay more for higher insurance?

Ty0604

Oh yeah. I must admit that when I read your previous post my thought was "That's silly, I'll just ride my bike to the airport!" Now I feel dumb lol

Ty0604

Do you know of any bike friendly airlines? I might take the bus from Portland to a larger city like Boston and fly out of there.

indyfabz

You can. The rate calculator on bikeflights allows you to up the insurance amount. It comes with low coverage for free (maybe $100 or so), and you can buy more. (Same is the case if you book directly through FedEx, etc.) IIRC, going up from what they gave me to $1,400 wasn't that much. I ship my racks, stove and empty liquid fuel bottle in the bike box. The replacement value of the bike is about $1,400, so I just went with that. The racks retail for $210/each and the stove about $150 so I took a bit of a gamble, but life is a gamble. You really need to check your particular airline's bike charge to determine the most economical method. If your airline charges $200 for a bike it might be cheaper to simply pay someone to box it and then ship it. When I went to Missoula last time the airline wanted $175 for the bike. Professional packing of the bike by a LBS ($55), shipping it to REI ($75) and having it reassembled and tuned there ($40) was only $170.

revcp 

I'm curious how many folks start at home and end at home. I've "always" wanted to do a cross country tour. In a few years a friend and I (cycling and paddling partner of 20+ years) are clearing time for what we initially would be a coast to coast tour. I started thinking about the money invested in flying first to one coast and then home from another. Not an insignificant amount. I also, of course, thought about the pollutants involved (It's not a holier than thou thing, it's just something I personally would really struggle with). We're now rerouting. We'll be riding from the Twin Cities to Santa Fe, up the Great Divide Trail to Yellowstone and then back east to the Twin Cities. It will only be about 2,400 miles or so, but I'm okay with the lesser mileage and letting go of the idea of coast to coast.

BobG

To compare prices shipping by UPS just go to their website and use the "Calculate time and cost" tool. As Doug and DJB have already mentioned, the trick with UPS is to use the smallest possible box that will do the job. Here is a hypothetical shipment from ME to OR of 39 pounds with $2500 insurance using a very common bike shop box size of 56"x8"x31".........



But shrink that box down just 2" in height to 56"x8"x29" and you eliminate the "large package surcharge".* See what that does to the shipping fee....



This would be the price shipped from a UPS store. A bike shop may have a better commercial rate. As indyfabz points out Bikeflights may offer the best deal.

*'A Large Package Surcharge will be applied to each UPS package when its length plus girth [(2 x width) + (2 x height)] combined exceeds 130 inches (330cm), but does not exceed the maximum UPS size of 165 inches (419cm)"