Hello, all! My name is Caroline. I am hoping to move from the West Coast of the United States all the way to England around February 2024.
I have a lot of questions for this process, but I wanted to focus on getting things from point A to point B. Being on the totally wrong side of the country to just throw things on a boat and wait, I know I will need a service that takes my things via truck across the continental US first.
It looks like there are a lot of services offered, but at present it is hard to estimate the amount of space in a “pod” I would need to send things. It’s a bit embarrassing but I think it is also important to say, much of what I will be moving is electronics and collectable memorabilia. I have a fairly large collection I’ve added to for decades now, which I’d like to bring with me (and which my soon-to-be husband supports, thank God!). They are all for personal use and display, not to be sold. I will not be bringing any furniture.
Put in as simple a list I can, my questions are as follows:
- What are the best services, in your experience, to use to send things both across the United States and across the Atlantic? Is a pod service recommended?
- Is there a good brand of plastic tubs that are fairly sturdy to last the voyage? Water damage or denting is something I want to avoid.
Is insurance included in these services? If not, is there a good movers insurance that would cover both land and sea shipments? - I understand there is a TOR form I must fill out. Even if it is filled out, will there be any import fees or VAT charges applied to what I bring, if it is a higher value? Are there any “loopholes” or easy misses on my part that could end up costing a lot later on when trying to claim my belongings?
- Hopefully not too morbid a question, but I also have a sealed wooded box with the cremated remains of my dog who passed away three years ago. Since it is a sealed container with powder-like contents, I am concerned about bringing this with me as well. Is there a way to send it safely? Would there be any need for border control to open this box?
P.S. - If you’ve also moved from the Western United States to England, or otherwise had a similar shipment experience, could you please let me know your experiences in the process? Is there anything you wish you’d known beforehand?
And… if you also sent a personal pod, could you please let me know what the shipment costs were, so I can make a rough budget plan? I know there are variables, but it would be helpful to hear what others’ experiences have been.
Thank you so much for your time and knowledge. I greatly appreciate your input!!!
Hi. We moved from SoCal to the UK in 2017. We moved back to the USA in the fall of 2020, with deep regrets. So ok,, here is the "not condensed" version of my advice (with the caution that things may have changed, so do your homework to save yourself some headaches later).
I had the problem with ashes. Three cats, one of whom we'd had for 20 years who had just recently died. We did not bring them. I don't remember why now, but I strongly suspect the fear of problems at customs would have been the reason. So they are all nicely mingled together under some palm trees on a hill that overlooks the Pacific Ocean instead, together forever. They'd have been in a box in the closet in the UK.
We used Rainier International Movers' consolidated service.
https://www.rainieros.com/aboutus/meet-our-staff/ and our coordinator was Dave Wiviott. He was great - could not have asked for more from him. (These are NOT the guys in LA, who have a bad rep. Rainer is up in the Pac NW. If you contact him he'll get you info on how an international move works. Say that "Nan from Glasgow" says hi!" for me.) He can give you a rough price estimate and will arrange for your goods to be surveyed at no cost to you. Contact a few different movers. They should all be willing to survey your goods at no cost. Whoever you end up doing business with, be SURE they send someone out and you get a written estimate from them. Do not accept anything that's done over the phone or on the internet. Seriously, you won't like what probably would come next in that scenario.
And make sure
everything you intend to take with you is listed on that survey.
As an aside, I knew how much we'd be taking because it was already boxed and I could do the math. So Dave and I were pretty much in agreement to put everything into Lift Vans (crates) to ship it to the UK. When we were returning to the States the Scottish surveyor was way, way off with her initial survey results. I had also literally measured everything and could do the math and she was planning on charging me for significantly more space than I needed. (Like 2 cubic yards for an umbrella!) Thankfully, I sent photos of the larger items (with a yardstick in the photos for scale) and the list of boxes with dimensions to Dave and he sorted that out within 24 hours. My estimate ended up being just a very few cubic feet under what actually went in the cargo container. We actually had room to spare, when all was said and done, but it was cheaper from UK to USA to get a container. So bottom line - check everything, and don't be timid about questioning things that don't look right until you get an answer you understand and agree with. Make sure you know what is included and what is not included in the move price you are quoted.
Dave contracted with a local company (Sullivan) to load our stuff into the Lift Vans with only three days notice when our original mover flaked out on us big-time on our "to the UK" move. (It was one of those "you pack it and we come get it and deliver it to your door" companies. That might begin with a vowel ... ahem.) Sullivan then held the crates in the warehouse until a full cargo-container's worth of goods combined (with other people's crates) was ready to go from the West Coat to the UK, and then they all shipped to England together. I'm not sure if they went out of Long Beach or the Port of LA, but it was one of those. It took a few extra months (we got there in early May and our stuff arrived in very early July), but that really shaved quite a lot off the costs from shipping them immediately on their own. The movers contracted by Rainier down in England to get the stuff from down in the port up to us in Scotland were ok - not as good as the packers, but they did the job ok. Slower by a long way, and a bit less careful with our stuff - they had unpacked the crates and put all the boxes in their truck to bring it up to us. (It was rather amazing to see them driving a HUGE cross-country moving van down our little horseshoe-shaped lane, but they did it and then backed all the way out again! But there are other options - I just went with the cheapest because.... I'm a cheapskate and there was no hurry.
So. Lift Vans (crates) vs cargo containers.
You can get a heck of a lot into a cargo container. You also have to be able to get that cargo into the container, meaning you'll either have to pay someone to come take your stuff to the container if the company won't let you bring it to them (and then the reverse at the other end) or the company will have to get that container to your house/apartment. And drop it off somewhere for you to unload. You get a limited amount of time to do that, and if you're in a city the local authorities may not be pleased if you have a cargo container in the street or on the sidewalk.... and about the size of lanes in some places in the UK - oy! Also, there is a nasty little thing called demurrage. It can get pricey, so you'll want to read up on that.
If you're shipping as freight (Lift Vans), your space is tighter, but my experience was that all the costs were set and done, with no surprises. Depending on how much "stuff" you have it may or may not be a cheaper option cheaper than a cargo container. You can use plastic bins, but you're going to lose a bit here and there as far as space since they aren't completely flush with each other when packed into the space. You will be begging for those inches back at the end, if you're like I was, and I had gone with plain corrugated cardboard packing boxes. I also brought a LOT of collectable and sentimental memorabilia with us. And books. I shipped 40+ boxes of books. But at the time I thought it was a one-way trip. I used good grade packing boxes - pay a little extra for the good ones. You'll need to check the interior dimensions of the crate if you go that route and then choose boxes that will stack well in that size space. You don't want to put too much weight in any given box - I think I held mine to no more than 50 pounds per book box. I had a hefty-bag in each box as a liner, and put everything into it that way, then folded over the top of the bag and tucked it in. For breakables, I packed my clothing in around them. Due to the insurance, I had to leave all the boxes unsealed. We had three crates, and just under 740 cubic feet of stuff. It was a lot of stuff, really, but the Sullivan guys were amazing and tetris champions. Something to note when thinking of Lift Vans - the size quoted is the exterior size, not the interior. Do your planning by the interior size! One of the really nice things about using the slow-boat Lift Van option for us is that it went by size, not weight. We had a LOT of weight. Pretty much all the other options figure weight into price.
Your shipper will probably offer you shipping insurance. The shipper's insurance will not cover self-packed boxes, but the movers on both ends (when we went back to the USA as well) of our moves were ok with it if we just didn't seal the boxes. Each mover looked in a few boxes, then just shrugged and marked "carrier packed" on the outside of all of them and sealed them up for us. Saved them work, after all.
And not to be bragging, but I'm a good packer from having done a couple of dozen moves on my own. For shipping insurance you typically have two basic options - catastrophic loss (if the ship goes down) and by listing each item you want insured. Moving to the UK I was told that it was an all-or-nothing gig: If I wanted to insure, say, my collection of Roseville Pottery only and nothing else in the shipment, it couldn't be done. I had to list the value of
every single item and then pay to insure it. That insurance was eye-wateringly expensive, and since I had packed all my stuff really well I went with the sinking-ship option for much less money. On our return to the USA I went with the same option and regretted it, as some of our stuff had to be wrapped for international shipping (I'd bought furniture) and the local movers in Glasgow did a mediocre job. We had a few pieces damaged, but could not claim for the repair costs. But then, the price to replace them all combined would still have been less than the insurance premium, should we have replaced them. Shop around and see if you can get a better deal.
By the way, I would list exactly - and I do mean
exactly - what the contents of each box is on the outside of the box, if you go that route. If you are doing all your own packing, get the stuff in the boxes, then number the boxes, then transfer the info about the contents of the boxes onto a spreadsheet to use for your TOR. You will probably want to group "like" items together as much as possible. My kitchen boxes read sort of like "16 piece glassware set, fifteen skeins knitting wool, 8 scarves, five bathroom towels". (Hey, it worked and saved on packing filler!) Pack the stuff so that nothing moves around at all if you jostle the box, and it holds its shape if you put several other similarly packed boxes on top of it.
Your movers will renumber the boxes with their own numbering/tracking system and provide you with an itemized list of what you have in there, which is what they will give to the customs people. As long as what you have on your list pretty much matches what is on the moving company's list handed to customs, you're ok. Be sure to read the "what can I not import to the UK" list. If you are moving there to live and the stuff you are shipping is all your own personal goods, you're fine - no tax. Don't buy anything brand new to ship over. It needs to at least have the appearance of having been part of your household goods for a while.
All our USA electronics worked fine with adapters. I bought a a small transformer than handled my stereo system fine. We were told not to bring lamps - which was just stupid of me to have listened to. Lamps are lamps are lamps. LED lights don't care what the current type is - they'll work in both countries. So you might need a cheap plug adapter to be able to connect to the mains, but after that using LED bulbs takes care of all. There are two general types of lighbulbs - Edison (screws into your lamp) and bayonette (push and twist). Most of what I found there was bayonette, but again an inexpensive adapter can be gotten for that problem as well. I ~REALLY~ regretted leaving a lot of my kitchen small appliances behind in the USA. With a good step-down transformer they'd have worked fine. The cost of replacing any one of them over there was well higher than the cost of a transformer, the selection wasn't as good, and (although I went mid-range rather than spending for top-of-the-line) the quality was lacking what I would have expected it to have been considering where I purchased the items. (John Lewis, for one.) If you've got, for example, a really good metal 1950s Waring blender, don't part with it! And since our TV in the USA was pretty much a large computer monitor, it would have worked fine in the UK with a cable box. We had to buy a replacement, though, because we didn't think about it enough and got all tied up with that "different broadcast formats" thing, which only counts if you're not using any sort of cable or converter box these days, I think. Anyway, if you can bring it, it might be cheaper to ship it over than pay for a replacement in the UK.
I'd love to tell you what it will cost, but shipping costs have gone totally bonkers It cost me, in 2020, twice as much to get to the East Coast from the UK using the cheapest option as it did to get just about the same amount of stuff to the UK from SoCal 3 years earlier. The cargo shipping routes are still pretty messed up due to the Pandemic. Dave would be a better resource for real-time info.
Feel free to PM if I can be of any assistance. And good luck! It looks scary at first, but just go step-by-step and you'll manage it ok
