Sending my Stuff to the UK

Hello All,

I will be moving to the U.K. next month and we sort of have our shipping arrangment figured out but I just wanted to know what other possible options are...

We will be sending our stuff in a crate, not sure how big they are if anyone knows who can tell me.  Plus it will take 9 weeks to get there.  We'll be shipping loads of wedding presents and my personal stuff like clothes etc...

Any other experiences others would like to share?

I had the same issue when I moved here last September. I highly underestimated the amount of stuff I had! I packed the clothes I needed in two suitcases and brought them over with me. I used Creighters and Freighters for my large items, which took about a month. For books (and, as a former English teacher, I have A LOT of them), I used M-Bags from the Post Office, which take 4-6 weeks but are MUCH cheaper than conventional mail. I still have quite a bit of stuff at my parents' house in the US that I am in no hurry to get over here. I have been back twice since September and will be going again this fall, so each time I bring back another "load" and send some more of our wedding presents via regular mail.

Good luck!

blue_iris:
I'm also an English teacher, and I am struggling on how to ship all my books over!  I'm moving on the 4th of June from New Hampshire to Bristol.  I was going to see how much it would cost to send a big box o' books tomorrow... what exactly are M-Bags?  Any other tips for shipping? Thanks!

I checked it out--M-Bags are the way to go for books and other printed material--much cheaper!

http://www.iosart.com/misc/m-bags.html

I have a lot of books as a bit of an academic and personally found that m bags were a lot more expensive for me than just including the books in the shipping I already had to do.  Nearly half of my shipment ended up being books, so I decided to have the shipping company deal with them (U Pak We Ship).  We had to pay for a minimum sized shipment.  Luckily our bundle came in just under that size, so I'd have paid the same with that company if I'd sent the books or not.

I'll tell you though, when those boxes arrived and they all had to be hauled up to our third floor flat (2nd floor in UK terms), I was more than happy I had movers doing it for me!!

definitely use the m-bags for books. i shipped about 15 of them and all arrived just fine.

Hmm, looks like if you've got loads of stuff U-Pak We-Ship is the way to go.  I don't have much at all--maybe a big suitcase of clothes, some Cd's and then the books.  Plus my harp.  I'm looking into Craters and Freighters for the harp right now.

scary!  I thank heavens I was able to carry my violin with me.  Good luck with the harp.

I used M-Bags because I didn't want to ship all of my things at once right before the wedding. I figured that would be too overwhelming. So I used M-Bags for the majority of my books and shipped the important/sentimental/valuable ones with Creighters and Freighters just to be safe. The M-Bags were MUCH cheaper than sending via regular surface mail. I know that one of the bags I sent was about 40 pounds, and it only cost a little over $40. Compare that to almost $200 if I had sent them in boxes via regular mail. Yikes! Funnily, the M-Bags all arrived at my in-laws house on the same day. Imagine the look of shock on my brother-in-law's face when the postman unloaded five bags of books. He thought his mother had gone crazy on Amazon!

Thank you all for the advice on using M-Bags.  I sent 2 bags today for only $250 (the cost of sending one box via regular mail).  If I could, I'd buy you all a pint in two weeks when I arrive!

Hopefully everything will be delivered to Bristol within a few months.  Thanks again!

Follow-up:
Just got 1 M-bag yesterday... hopefully the second one will come soon.  That was quick!  I expected it to take months.

Follow up #2:
second M-Bag came Friday. So weird how they arrived at different times. Oh well. The point is, they came!

How many books can you get in an M-Bag? Like, about the same as a 2' x 2' x 2' book box, or by weight or...?

When I had a mover look at my house a few years ago, he said half the cost of moving me would be my books, of which there are Many.

There's a weight limit on M-bags. For most places it's 66 lbs, for the UK it's 44, although I don't know how strictly they enforce that.

BCM, were your M-bags sent by air? When I was moving, they had both surface and air options, but I only see the airmail option now on the website. I would guess they'd discontinued the surface option along with their other surface services. My surface M-bag did take months to arrive, but it was about $1/pound.

I am so bummed out about the surface mail being discontinued!