Dualkit, Well, I'm glad to hear someone besides me sees the value in an HC !! I'll probably not use this every day but often though. I looked around on EBay, machine sites, and contacted all of my machine shop contacts in the pacific northwest for a year ..... with no results. I noticed the same clapped out machines coming up on EBay for crazy prices. I finally decided to ask Paul Babin, given he's been working with Hardinge products all his life and there seem to be more of them in the eastern U.S. Sure enough, he knew of a late model one near him and I bought it. I had it sent to him so he could do a once-over just to make sure everything was good. It wasn't - evidently someone previous had likely run water-based flood coolant and then it sat. So the dovetail needed grinding, and the carriage needed grinding and new turcite. It ended up costing more than I had hoped, and I have to say my experience with Paul Babin has been a very good one. Anyway, that's the short story. Many, many years ago I ran an HC in a prototype / low volume machine shop and learned to truly appreciate the machine. It is my lathe of choice by far for anything not requiring a tailstock - which is 99% of anything I do.
To the other posters, thank you tons for the leads on shippers and the input on air-ride. I'm on it !!