Safest way to ship rare valuable parts

[Curtis Harper]

Gentlemen, ladies, Neanderthals of like. Whether you are sending parts to me or anywhere else in the country, PLEASE STOP throwing parts in a box and thinking the air will insulate them from damage. As these bikes get older and the parts supplies get thinner, preserving the parts that you ship any where should start to become a high priority. Again yesterday, we received cylinders and pistons leisurely thrown in a box with a little newspaper.  Both pistons broken at the skirts. These are for a V700 which are very hard to find.

Point being that if you're going to ship something, and you're not sure it will be safe, have a packing company like UPS Store, or other do it for you. It may cost a little bit more but not near as much as a set of pistons. You are going to spend possibly thousands of dollars on a restoration, why go cheap on transporting bits and pieces.

Sure I will sell him parts but when you work as hard as we do to have the parts available, to see them needlessly destroyed just drives a guy nuts.

I digress, soap box dismount, with a full twist.

[RinkRat II]

       



            Nice Dismount

      Paul B

[Groover]

Good message broadcast. I bought a NOS Le Mans 1000 Taillight with the flairs about a year ago, they shipped it in a bubble type envelope. Guess what happened, it broke.

I mentioned to the seller, sort of... telling him how I really felt about that.. and he said that he had it in a box and that DHL changed the packaging at a custom point (was Germany) - so... not sure what the truth was on that, but that would be breaking rule number 3 in the transporter movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbs3zAzCg0c

[Rick in WNY]

Curtiss, sadly, that happens far too often as most people have no idea how to package something for shipping or what kind of abuse a package takes from the baggage gorillas. I say that lovingly, as my mother retired from the Post Office and I have a sister who still works there. The stories they told made me learn how to properly pack things that I ship.

Sure, you can put that Ming vase in a box with one layer of dollar store bubble wrap taped around it, and as long as you, the person who packed it, are the only one handling said box, it will be fine because you know what's in the box. The mailman or UPS pickup guy might see the word fragile on the box. But once it gets to the sorting centers, all bets are off because the automated equipment is anything but gentle. Gentle is slow, and time is money.

So, points to packing:

Point 1 - Protect it in bubble wrap. Wrap and securely tape one layer of good bubble wrap at a time, bubbles in on the first layer especially as they help support any bits that hang off the main body better that way.

Point 2 - Get a big enough box! Too many things are shipped in boxes that barely fit them and allow no room for a cushion.

Point 3 - Wrap more layers of bubble wrap around it until it fills one direction of the box. At this point, insert the wrapped object into the box.

Point 4 - Fill the voids - if the wrapped item can move inside the box, it can smash itself to bits inside the box. Fill around it firmly so it can't move.

The ultimate point is to imagine a 3 dimensional cocoon of packing material around your object being shipped. It is in the center, protected on all sides by layers of cushion material that extends out and completely fills the box IN ALL DIRECTIONS. The cushion material needs to be strong enough to keep the object "floating" in the middle of the box.

Do this, and things will arrive just fine. Fail at any one of these steps... and you'll wish you had bought insurance.

[Kent in Upstate NY]

We used a UPS store to pack a fragile china set. It was pricy but nothing broke.

[AH Fan]

Gentlemen, ladies, Neanderthals of like. Whether you are sending parts to me or anywhere else in the country, PLEASE STOP throwing parts in a box and thinking the air will insulate them from damage. As these bikes get older and the parts supplies get thinner, preserving the parts that you ship any where should start to become a high priority. Again yesterday, we received cylinders and pistons leisurely thrown in a box with a little newspaper.  Both pistons broken at the skirts. These are for a V700 which are very hard to find.

Point being that if you're going to ship something, and you're not sure it will be safe, have a packing company like UPS Store, or other do it for you. It may cost a little bit more but not near as much as a set of pistons. You are going to spend possibly thousands of dollars on a restoration, why go cheap on transporting bits and pieces.

Sure I will sell him parts but when you work as hard as we do to have the parts available, to see them needlessly destroyed just drives a guy nuts.

I digress, soap box dismount, with a full twist.

Here.. Here.Especially on painted Spiney parts, turns out those suckers are almost impossible to paint match or bring back to factory.

Ciao

[Kiwi_Roy]

Just received a parcel from MG Cycle containing 4 big end shells
4 x 4 x 4" box in a padded envelope
Inside the box 4 individual packets packed with bubble wrap
No worries there for sure 

[wirespokes]

Rick in WNY - good write up! I will add that if it isn't packed well or properly, insurance may just void your claim.

I've gotten things that weren't packed well, even speedometers and gauges sent to me for repair. It's hard to believe people do that. Better to pay a bit more for a larger/heavier box than the resulting damage. That's actually the best insurance!

One customer commented that the way to pack is expecting a drop of six feet to concrete. Someone else said they packed to ensure the item surviving falling off the truck at 60.

[normzone]

Part of my day job is to figure out how things got broken in shipment.

Even with the best of packaging, there are approximately twelve chances for your shipment to fall ten feet or more.

I've had professionally packaged gear be destroyed before it left the state. I've tracked UPS shipments where the delivery truck caught fire and burned to the ground. I've had well packaged equipment be "modified" by the vibration in the truck over six hundred miles. We sometimes skip the MIL spec shock and vibe and just ship from the west coast to the east and back again - if it survives that, you're doing well.

Always assume the worst, and package accordingly.

[s1120]

Part of my last job was shipping. I quickly learned from shipping out, and getting in parts, that you need to pack it,. go out, and stand in the back of a truck, and toss it on the ground.. Can it survive? 

[wirespokes]

normzone - are you saying it's a 12% chance of falling ten feet of more? That's scary!

[Rick in WNY]

normzone - are you saying it's a 12% chance of falling ten feet of more? That's scary!

No, he's saying that in an average trip, each package has 12 times where it has a chance to fall at least 10 feet... and usually with the landing on concrete or some other non-forgiving surface.

I don't claim to be a packaging expert, but I do ship more items than most people do per year, and I will say that since I've learned how to pack "my way" I've only had one item damaged in shipping, and I think normzone called it in that it had to have been a 10 foot drop, I had that thing packed good, but it wasn't good enough...

[n3303j]

UPS showed up daily at the place I worked. Truck was piled full during the holidays. Routinely watched the driver use the boxes on the floor as steps to access boxes higher on the pile or on the side shelves. It wasn't unusual to receive a dented package with a boot print on it.

So I always packed for the 12 foot drop AND the full weight of 200# driver applied through a single boot.

Seagate once told me they lost 20% of disk drives shipped UPS. They had better luck with FEDEX.

[Dukedesmo]

Doesn't help that the likes of Amazon place an item in an oversized, flimsy box with a few sheets of screwed up paper on top of it - probably makes people think that this is the correct way to do it...

[SIR REAL ED]

Excellent advice Curtis.  Thanks for the reminder.

Thanks also for the wise council and great service you have given me over the last couple months as a Newbie Nevada 750 owner.

Anyone who has not used Curtis at Harper's Moto Guzzi as a valuable, knowledgable resource, is missing out on a great customer service experience.

thanks again,

Ed

[John Ulrich]

I was admiring a big $$ custom car recently and the owner had a fantastic center console running down the middle of the car.  $4000 to made.  UPS lost it!  it showed up in China broken a month later.  Too bad, gave him his $147 back..... He purchased their insurance for $4000....too bad, they don't pay out for claims.  $4000 later he had a second one made.

[Rick in WNY]

Anyone who has not used Curtis at Harper's Moto Guzzi as a valuable, knowledgable resource, is missing out on a great customer service experience.

I'll agree, Curtis helped me out a lot, even if my question was a simple what to get to replace all the fuel fittings and lines on my 04 Cali. He's a good man and a pleasure to do business with!

[wirespokes]

John - that's infuriating, and hard to believe they wouldn't make good on the claim.

I've had similar difficulties with USPS. They're self insured and will do everything - lie, cheat, play dirty - to keep from paying out. You have to contact the Post Master General to possibly get any satisfaction. I'm sure there are many who try to take advantage of the system and that's what we get, but that's no way to treat a customer.

The insurance thing seems to me like a big scam. I mean, if you pay someone to do something and they fail, why should you have to pay extra for insurance in case they do, to cover your ass? It should be up to them to make good on their promise of delivering the item to the right place undamaged. But that's not how the game is played by all the big players. So don't count on the safety net (insurance) to catch you. Pack for the worst!

[roadventure]

Point well made.  Thank you for the reminder.

[80CX100]

Quote from: SIR REAL ED on Today at 09:48:21 AM
Anyone who has not used Curtis at Harper's Moto Guzzi as a valuable, knowledgable resource, is missing out on a great customer service experience.

I'll agree, Curtis helped me out a lot, even if my question was a simple what to get to replace all the fuel fittings and lines on my 04 Cali. He's a good man and a pleasure to do business with!

^^^^^Yup!       When I got into guzzis 7 yrs ago, up to that point, I had never even seen one in the flesh.

Luckily one of my first calls happened to be to Curtis, he very patiently walked me through a must do list on my 30 yr old bike. 

His willingness to share his knowledge, set a high bar for conscientious care going forward.

Tks

Kelly 

[chuck peterson]

We used to ship a lot of camera equipment....

Once you packed it really well in a box...put it in another bigger box with packing materials all around...box in a box technique