shipping seats
 

I'm getting a pair of Recaros for my car, and they're going to get shipped from CA to IL. I know that large and relatively heavy packages aren't the cheapest, but can y'all give any direction for the easiest and most cost-effective way to do this, and which service may be best? Seats are being packaged in a single large wardrobe box. When I put guesses of weight in I end up with exorbitant shipping costs that don't seem right. I figured it shouldn't cost more than $150 or $200 so to send it by ground, no?

in a perfect world I can help the seller get them out today but not sure that's going to happen.

Freight for large heavy items. Do you have a pickup truck or trailer to get them?

Have them shipped from CA via ground freight. Ask that they strap the wardrobe box to a pallet for forklift use. Ask for dock pickup and when the freight company calls, go pick them up at the freight company. A lot of the cost is getting them from loading docks onto a truck that can get around in a neighborhood. And the lift gate and the delivery driver.

I have gone to the freight lines terminal and pulled in next to 18 wheelers and had the forklift drop the box in the pickup.

It is still expensive. The other choice for door to door delivery is FedEx freight.

Based on the longest measurement, will not be cheap to ship, done it more than a few times.

Used to ship items like that via Greyhound. Would check out their rates.

Shipping seats is cheap and easy.

When I ship Carrera seats I get one full size garment box from UHaul and the shorty. Sleeving those with seats headrest to base creates a strong and clean box.

Then use bikeflights.com It's for shipping bikes but I've shipped with them about 50 times now, all large car parts, and because they have a volume deal with UPS, their rate is about half what UPS is. There are other shipping sites like bikeflights, I found them having to ship a bike.

it has been a long time, but i think i vaguely remember going to the grayhound bus station to pick up my seats. in oakland. they were just wrapped in that plastic shipping stuff.

Shaun does this a lot....

Minimal experience here but I also used Greyhound way back when. The terminal was near where I worked back then.

https://faq.bikeflights.com/support/solutions/articles/13000072405-can-i-ship-something-other-than-a-bike-through-bikeflights-com-

I don't have a pickup (or access to one), but I do have two cars that will easily fit the box. The Saab has so much room and such a big liftgate that it might as well be a pickup truck, and you can probably even load it with a lift truck.


Thanks, I'd forgotten about that - I'll check it out.

yes, the seller is packaging them in just such a box. I've used bikeflights before (sending and receiving) for, well, bikes; but I believe they have an explicit policy against shipping non-bike stuff. Edit: commenter said same.

As others have said, Greyhound. It has been a few years but it worked well. The wardrobe box was used, both seats fit inside without disassembly. I don't recall if I got a confirmed delivery date, or they notified me. If I recall, these could get bumped if the bus baggage area was full, though it has been a few years so my memory could be faulty.

How long does it typically take with Greyhound compared to conventional shipping services? Seats going from southern California (Riverside Co.) to Chicago)

Then I guess it's a good thing they don't open boxes. :)

I stopped using Greyhound after they lost a 914 hood. But a bumper cover for my 328i came just fine.

I just paid for Greyhound, so I hope I will have a BMW bumper cover experience and not a 914 hood experience :) Cost vs. Bikeflights was the same, either is easy for the seller and for me, and apparently sometimes I'm enough of a rule-follower that I couldn't quite bring myself to tell them it was a couple of Bike Friday New World Tourists and misc. parts - since I'm a bike nerd with a large fleet, it's not too hard to come up with something that would add up to that size and weight :)

You should be safe with a BMW experience, years ago Greyhound was losing a lot of stuff and someone must have cracked some heads. And with no one traveling now, seats won't get lost in a sea of other luggage.

Good luck!

That's me, as well.

Thanks for the post about using Greyhound. I would really appreciate it if you could update the thread with results.

Sending positive vibes for a successful transit!

PS - I have a pair of nice Recaro SRD's with sub belt holes I'd like to sell at some point, which will probably require shipping too, so I have a stake in the game.

I had a recent weird Greyhound experience but it was ok in the end. Pair of carbon gt3 seats from a seller here, shipped from Cali to C'ville Va. Only problem is many greyhound terminals here are in private hands now, and the cville terminal is on restricted hours, so the seats went back and forth between richmond and cville for a week before someone routed them via Baltimore, whose bus arrived when c'ville terminal was actually open. But its still a good way to ship bulky items.

The only problem with Grayhound is that passenger luggage will always take priority. This will impact you more if shipping large boxes. I once shipped a huge box full of FG parts and it took over a month for the buyer to receive them. I was shipping from Ca to MI and somewhere in route they decided to pull my package to make room for luggage. There's no tracking when this happens so your package will be left off at whatever GH station they managed to leave it at. I filed a missing package report and heard nothing for close to 6 weeks and was ready to refund the guy which would have been a huge loss, but at the last minute they found it sitting at the station mid-trip and reloaded. It all worked out in the end but its something to be aware of. I also remember them asking for identifying marks and a detailed description of the box so I would suggest labeling it somehow as a way to easily identify and take a few pics in case something goes sideways. Its a closed system so they really cant lose the items but they may end up in a warehouse with hundreds of other non descriptive boxes. That said, I used GH many times prior to that incident and it only happened once. The larger the box the more likely it may be pulled to make room for luggage, but with Covid going on at the moment it may not be as much of an issue. Good luck.

Check out shipnerd.com


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Update: They were shipped via Greyhound, leaving the Palm Springs, CA area on June 6th. The most recent information I can get out of Greyhound is that they left Las Vegas on June 11th (that was 11 days ago) and the next place they would arrive at is Salt Lake City. I still do not have the seats. I certainly did not expect to get them in a week, but just as certainly I did not expect it to take 16 days and counting with no idea where they are.

I'm guessing they were pulled off to make room for someones luggage and are now sitting in one of their station warehouses. You may need to file a lost item claim to get things moving. The good news is that they are not really lost since its a closed system, the bad news is that once they pull the item off the bus they don't really indicate any details. I don't recommend shipping large items via Grayhound for this reason.