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KUGO
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« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2018, 09:38:17 PM » |
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I had my '14 Valk shipped in an enclosed trailer from a dealer in Woodstock, IL to my place in Charleston, IL. This is a good five hour trip in a car, sans trailer, so probably more in a truck with a trailer. I made this transaction exactly 14 months ago for a mere $200. The dealer set it up on his end during our deal, and I was simply going to give the guy the cash for the delivery upon arrival around Christmas time. He used a service I think was called "U-SHIP-IT", or something along that line.
The concept of it went like this: the dealer posted on that service, saying he had a motorcycle needing shipment from Woodstock to my address ASAP. Supposedly qualified and experienced, insured, etc. shippers gave him bids for what they would do the job for. He received a bid of $200 from a "member shipper" who wanted to take a holiday trip from northern Illinois to Tennessee. His low bid was indicative of the fact that he was only trying to get a little traveling money for a trip he intended to take anyway. Who could lose?
[The above concludes my reply to the original poster of this thread, asking about those of us with experience shipping bikes and the cost involved. The rest of this will be a more detailed (read: "lengthy") explanation of the end results of the shipping experience above.]
The truck/trailer arrived late afternoon only a couple hours later than the expected time, a few days before Christmas, but it had been snowing and the road conditions were an issue. The driver had also kept in touch near the end of his trip to get more detailed directions and to let me know the weather had been slowing him down. The young man of about 25 pulled up to my garage in a late-model pickup and a matching 14' enclosed trailer. He hopped out of the truck and met me and was polite, professional and helpful in every way. Santa and his V-eight-diesel reindeer and sleigh had arrived in the snow with our Christmas present from us to us!
I stood beside him at the rear of the trailer as he unlocked the back door/ramp. When the ramp was down we both looked in horror at what we saw. My new, supposedly pristine, black 2014 Valkyrie was lying on its right side, still loosely attached to the right-side tethers, but completely free of all tethers (2) on the left and completely free of the front wheel chock. The floor of the trailer had several long aluminum tie-down strips bolted down to the floor of the trailer for ease in attaching ratchet straps at various points. I cook as a hobby and have most cooking gadgets. Do you know what a micro-plane grater is? Picture three of them at about 5" wide x 12' long bolted to the floor as my bike slid over them for the entire five+ hour trip. Or just picture them grating the right side of the bike, all the tupperware, exhaust pipe, foot-pegs, passenger grab rail, handlebar stuff, etc. like a huge aluminum cheese grater. Merry Christmas! Surprise!
No, I didn't kill the kid. (Although, in all fairness to his obvious wariness, my face maybe didn't immediately communicate that I wasn't going to.) We went inside the lit trailer to survey the damage. He was also really trying to remain professional, even though we could BOTH see just how screwed he knew he was. He'd had four 500 lb. tie-down straps, two per side, as the sole means of securing the bike. Plus the chock, which was useless when the bike went down, especially as it had no wheel chock lock securing it. (F = M x A. A 750 lb. bike "tied down" with only a couple of thin straps will go down on the first expressway on-ramp pothole. The two straps on the left had snapped clean. Before we moved the bike, I took extensive photos and continued to do so for the rest of the "experience", which proved helpful when remuneration got cranking later. We righted the bike, rolled it off the trailer and into my garage where there was more light. We gathered the broken bits as well. Right mirror and other stuff. Don't remember it all now, and don't care to relive it all (and I distinctively remember deciding to forget what it looked like at that moment). We both assessed and photographed it for our own purposes.
The driver told me that he did not want to report this to his "employer", the shipping APP, as he wouldn't ever get a gig again. He said he would pay the amount of the repair out of his own pocket to avoid the black mark on his record. I didn't want to get involved with being caught in the middle of any of several entities. So, I foisted the whole thing on the dealership owner! He was the one I'd originally made the deal with and he was responsible, IMO, for making it right. He had left the day before shipment, anxious to take his wife to Florida for Christmas. He'd left the job of making sure the bike was securely anchored when loaded at his dealership completely to the "kid" with the truck/trailer. I had his cell# and called him as he was sipping an umbrella drink on the beach. (Literally!) He handled it pretty well, being professional, but clearly POed at the situation and the shipper.
I told him I'd paid the kid, but only after he signed a quick note/receipt I wrote saying he was responsible, etc. Mr. Dealership ended up having to deal with the shipper paying him back. I told him he had two options: I could send the bike back to him in Woodstock (and as the original shipper was headed on to Tennessee, he'd have to arrange for someone else to do it) or I could have my local Honda dealer come and trailer it to their shop and fix it instead of sending it all the way back up north. He sensibly chose the latter option. I'm sure he was warm in the sun on that beach in Ft. Lauderdale, but our genial relationship got a bit chilly around about that point. Really couldn't be helped. Merry Christmas to you, too, Mr. Dealership.
Some take-aways:
I'd fortunately already had all of my personal insurance ducks in a row, so if I DID get the short end of the dealership's stick somehow, I'd still be protected minus a deductible. Whether you are shipping or being shipped to, don't shortcut yourself on any insurance or liability protection you might or might not need. I was also dealing with a legit dealership (a Spyder Can-Am dealer, who had taken it in on a very low-mile trade). This whole experience could potentially have been a LOT worse in a private or owner-seller transaction.
If you're curious, the cost of the repairs came to about $2,200. For a "simple ground and pound" lay-down. And my local Owen Honda did a most thorough job and replaced, at my insistence, ANYTHING that may have been damaged in any way, cosmetically or otherwise, at no cost to me. Plus the extra trailering from my place to the local Honda. Ultimately, I had no costs at all except for the dampened Christmas joy. I'll accept that any day, considering alternatives. (I also had them check such things as frame tweaks, as I was concerned that the bike falling out of that lame front wheel chock could possibly affect the forks, frame or alignment. There were no issues and my riding since then has confirmed that.)
If you are trailering yourself, try to understand the physics involved and OVER-secure, never under. And know that wherever you attach the straps to your bike, you need to protect from cosmetic abrasion.
After the most exacting inspection I could give it when I finally got it back this past February, a year ago, the ONLY thing that I found that they had missed was a slightly scuffed right foot-peg feeler. And I was glad I found it. Now I knew that the bike wasn't quite perfect, and therefore wouldn't hurt me so bad the first time I accidentally inflicted a little usage-damage. Which is a lesson I learned from my great-uncle Sterling, who lived in SW Iowa, near Shenandoah and Farragut.
Sterling was a very successful farmer who raised crops and livestock. He had most of the latest implements and even invented and patented one, a device that lifted the bales of hay into the barn loft. Sterling bought a new pickup truck every other year. On the "off" year, he'd replace his family sedan, always a Buick or Olds. I spent every summer of my youth on that farm, growing up in Iowa City the other nine months of the year.
One summer he came back to the farm with a brand new Buick. Being into ALL things mechanical and internal-combustible, I raced out to the driveway to meet him and check out his new car. He was being his usual rather stoic self as I walked around the new wheels, oohing and drooling. Uncle Sterling walked over to the front side of the car, gripped the aerial radio antennae on the fender, and proceeded to bend that thing back and forth until it broke off. This is a true story. I was stunned and, I think, asked him why he did that. His reply has stuck with me. He said, "Those dang teenagers will break that thing off the first time I park in town. I'm denying them the satisfaction!"
I remember we didn't get much in the way of radio reception out there anyway.
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