shipping bike across country?

Hello. I have a question I am hoping someone can answer. I am trying to find my first bike. I think I have fallen for the kz650. I am eyeing one on Ebay right now, but it is in Georgia, and I am in San Francisco.

I have not bid on it yet because of concerns of shipping prices. The lowest price Ebay lists is $550. Which seems high to me.

I have only lived here for 5 months. Previously I lived in Columbus, OH. When I lived there I had a 1968 VolVo 1800s. I sold that on Ebay before I moved, and the person that bought it had it shipped to San Diego. If I remember correctly, he only paid about $500-$550 or so. This was for a car. Granted it was a small car, it was still a car.

Anyway, does the $550 shipping sound accurate, or does anyone have other input on it?

Thanks for any help,
Travis.

Welcome to the site!

Don't know about the cost of shipping, but, the 650 is a great bike.

You do realize that it now costs (as of today anyway) $0.70 per mile just for fuel for the average truck that's hauling your bike?

Add in the additional costs, such as driver wages, taxes, fees, truck and trailer payments, insurance, etc, and you are fast approaching (if not exceeding) $2.00 per mile to drive that truck from California to Georgia, and that's without profit.

If you can get that bike shipped to you for $550.00, do it and count yourself lucky, the days of cheap truck shipment are fading fast.

My brother had his bike shipped from Portland OR to Orlando about five years ago for $650. $550 doesn't sound too bad. You might want to try Craigslist and see if you can find a bike in your area. $550 is almost as much as most 650's are worth.

i have never considered calculating the prices it costs to drive a truck. my dealings with commercial shippers are that they bring your car someplace, or you drop it off some place. withing seven days a truck with enough room will stop by and add your car, and any other cars that are being shipped to their truck.

i was just going off the price that was paid in october for a spot on a car trailer going across the US. at that point gas was anywhere from $3.05 to $3.20 if i remember right.

i guess i expected a bike would be about around $400 based on that.

anyway, i have been keeping my eye for a kz650 locally, but really haven't seen anything except one in Sacramento, and the crazy guy in L.A. that supposedly found a container full of vintage Japanese bikes.

the one on Ebay fit most of the aspects of what I was looking for.

cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Kawasaki-KZ650_W...221190QQcmdZViewItem

maybe i will pass on the bike, and just keep my eye out more for something local or regional. it would be the more environmentally responsible thing anyway. i don't have any transportation right now so i am really wanting to find something, and not wait much longer.

$550 to ship the bike? Consider the cost and hassle of a one-way airline ticket to ride it back and the total cost may not be much different. If things don't change back to lower fuel costs in a hurry this country faces a fundamental change in the way we approach transportation.

That's right along the lines of what I found when I was researching the shipping issue. In the last year or so I've had to pass on several bikes that I would have picked up right away if they had been local. Shipping costs or the costs of fetching them myself just made the totals prohibitive to me. I did make a couple of long hauls to pick up bikes and that's how I learned about what 1K miles worth of driving ends up costing.

Since then, after the exhuberance and impulsivity subsided, I've seen a lot of good deals closer to home which would have been affordable if I hadn't already tied up so much into the first project.

Keep looking. Something will show up in your area. I know the "I-need-to-ride-now!" feeling because I've been dealing with it for over a year now. Good luck in your search. What it might cost you to retrieve a bike from far way, sight-unseen, may be used toward a bike that costs more initially, but that you can check out better in person.

Man! That got long-winded. I hope it helps though.

I would say that you could bid on uship.com to have someone haul your bike. I got mine from LA to Chicago for 450. The price was a steal in my opinion but the people that do it this cheap usually haul trailers or whatever and are looking to make some money extra for the trip back. The 450 was less than what their gas price was but since they had been paid to drive this trailer from Ind to Cali they happened to be able to do it for that cheap. No matter. I can't believe that you can't find a bike on the cheap in Cali. If you were willing to get a little bigger say 1000cc I know of a guy selling or perhaps sold by now but in your area (about 50-60 miles) just before I found my bike he was selling a kz1000ltd with some nice stuff on it for around 1800 and looked CLEAN dirtmagnit@hotmail.com Email him and perhaps he still has it. Bike had corbin saddle new looking metzlers fork brace geared moriwacki (sp) points cover nice pipe etc. All original green which looked very nice. Any way good luck.

With diesel prices pushing $4 a gallon, you had best jump on the $550 cross-country ship. The cheapest way to ship a bike is by Forward Air. They ship depot to depot. I have also used Allied Van Lines in the past. They take your bike and set it on a pallet and use tie downs to hold it. They are safe and fairly reasonable.

del

saxjonz wrote:

If you were willing to get a little bigger say 1000cc I know of a guy selling or perhaps sold by now but in your area (about 50-60 miles) just before I found my bike he was selling a kz1000ltd with some nice stuff on it for around 1800 and looked CLEAN dirtmagnit@hotmail.com Email him and perhaps he still has it. Bike had corbin saddle new looking metzlers fork brace geared moriwacki (sp) points cover nice pipe etc. All original green which looked very nice. Any way good luck.

This will be my first bike, and I will probably be doing about 50% city riding so I feel the kz1000 is probably larger than I need. Thanks for the info though.

JMKZHI wrote:

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crazy homeless guy wrote:

... and the crazy guy in L.A. that supposedly found a container full of vintage Japanese bikes.

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........................ Do tell! ... :woohoo: JMK.

Not sure what the deal is... I emailed to see if he had a price list for individual bikes. No response yet. He may just want people to make an offer on what they are interested in. Or maybe it is a scam.

losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/mcy/656143942.html

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