Thread: Shipping

I have bought a Clausing 8520 that I need to move 1000 miles. I am thinking of bolting it to a pallet and having a trucking company transport it. Does anybody have any advice relative to trucking?

Thanks

John

I recently had a machine delivered from California. I used a shipping broker, but the machine showed up by Day & Ross. From what I could figure out there's a transfer somewhere in the US for another company which appears to be http://www.gorlc.com/

Anyway the price was great. About half of everyone else. I don't know if this lower cost was just because of the use of a broker, maybe it was.

My advice is: drive your own.

An 8520 can easily be broken down and put into a Chevy Blazer, S-10 pickup, or anything larger. My Dad and I moved his 8520 exactly this way.

It's not that a truck freight company can't do the job. It's just that if they screw it up and damage the machine their liability comes out to 10 cents per pound...*and* proof of full loss of the entire poundage is *your* responsibility.

Here's what can happen...a Monarch EC Collet/Turret lathe delivered safely to the terminal, then a forklift operator picked it 4 feet up in the air with forks about 28" long when I was not watching, aiming for my pickup truck. He hit the smallest crack in the pavement and it was all over.

Matt,
Do tell how this turned out..

I got my 8520 in the back of a rented minivan -- flew to the city it was in and did a one-way car rental.

My last purchase was 3,500 pounds, so I hired it out. I used a company called Speciality Transport (spectransport.com). Worked with a guy by the name of John Demko. This was coast to coast. Price was half common carrier, and they promised door-to-door on same truck, so you can have a lot more control. Someone else here used them and was not happy, and another person also used them and was happy. You could find the thread discussing this with a search. I myself would use them again, but YMMV.

I was the one who mentioned John and Specially in that post. I would suggest calling and at least get an idea of cost. With gas at the ever rising price and time involved I would bet you are dollars ahead using a truck. If you and the machine are on or near truck lanes, major traffic corridors you will get very competitive pricing. I went to the Bay area from L.A. for some stuff in January in a Toyota truck, I wouldn't even travel that far unless the cost to ship was outrageous.

Steve

Originally Posted by exkenna

Matt,
Do tell how this turned out..

Exkenna, mostly a lot of yelling at the brain-dead people running the forklifts. First, they wanted to send it back (return it) and presumably let the sender deal with the damage. Of course I had prepaid, etc, I owned it...took awhile to get that concept clear that there was nobody to return it to.

Next they wanted to pickup the downed side with the forklift and dump it back the other way onto its base. Another round of dope slaps.

Finally they admitted that their "long fork" forklift (the one they supposedly went to get and I failed to notice had these miniscule forks on it) was down for the count and they didn't say anything about it....brought the crate down the ramp that way under enough back tilt and driving in reverse and did not mention this important detail.

Everyone wanted to know what was in there...and you see the futility of trying to explain a high-end turret/collet lathe to people having trouble with the above issues. I tried to simplify to an aerospace quality machine no longer manufactured. I should have told them nuclear waste or something that probably would have got me in trouble

I got my .10/lb check eventually. $230.

I think the machine is going to be OK, amazingly enough. Most of the damage is to this beautiful aluminum chip and coolant collection pan that "surrounds" the rear pedestal that the lathe bed mounts to. Its basically like a cast piece of aluminum "flashing", however does not actually touch the mounting pedestal. And the rear chip and splash shield sustained a little damage, it was the part sticking thru the top of the crate.

Dope slap also to the guy who crated it, I specifically asked for the machine to be thru-bolted to the skid. He agreed to this, giving me assurances of how he'd been doing this a long time (it was the sole intent of his business!), then used a couple of 3/4" steel bands...both of which broke...



Miraculously, none of the handwheels or spindle-end or the lever-closer was touched as far as I can tell. Everything turns smoothly without bind.



So, back to the OP, you see why my thought process is a little poisoned. You can ship stuff via truck. Its never as cheap as you think, you need to take lots of precautions with the crating, leave plenty of airspace in there, the forklift jockeys have been known to impale crates with reckless abandon (go to a truck terminal sometime....every time I've been I feared for my life due to the incredible speeds the guys run seemingly thru a tight maze of pallets and crates). Buy full value insurance and be prepared to fight if you need to make a claim, things are very slanted in the direction of the truck company (IOW Not in your favor). There are "tell tales" you can buy...simple little ball-bearing in a clear plastic case that rolls out of its "home" if the thing has been overturned and then re-righted without your knowledge. Also...note to forklift purchasers, avoid those with the very very short "4 foot tall" mast as those are likely truck unloaders, or really any lift that's known to come from a truck terminal. It's been run wide open forward and reverse literally 24 hours a day.

Originally Posted by bll230

I have bought a Clausing 8520 that I need to move 1000 miles. I am thinking of bolting it to a pallet and having a trucking company transport it. Does anybody have any advice relative to trucking?

Thanks

John

Yeah. Check with your insurance agent about an "inland marine" rider on your policy to cover damage to the machine during shipment. If you're not the one crating it, you really have no control how it will be crated. Simply bolted to a pallet makes all the cranks and hand wheels fair game for "fork skewering" practice by all the lift truck jockeys at every terminal it passes through. Even fully crated, they can still drop it, as Matt just illustrated. No matter what they tell you, the amount you collect is limited by the value per hundredweight in the published tariff they ship it under.

With your own insurance, you get to set your own value, within reason. It won't automatically be valued as scrap because the shipper decided to save a few bucks and shipped it as "machinery, scrap" rather than "machinery, used." You'll be dealing with your own agent for settlement, who has more impetus to keep you happy than some guy at the trucking company who knows you'll never ship with them again, anyway. And, you should be able to get a better explaination up front as to what the inland marine coverage actually covers, and how much it will pay.

Dennis

Thank you for the disaster stories(!) I have decided to drive it. Part of the fun of getting a nice machine for the hobbies is the 18 hours drive to get it home.

John