dnmun said:
it seems like the best way to do shipping is to use the US contact as the freight forwarding receiver and that would be in LA or seattle maybe or even vancouver depending on where the freight forwarder landed the container. then the guy who gets stuck would drive to the freight forwarder and take possession of the motors there. unload them from the container into his truck and remove them from the forwarder's location to his house. then ship them across the country. reshipping the pallet out of the container would be a large expense imo. maybe someone is familiar with importing and knows this business.
Good points, thanks for that.
Yeah, so our paltry order of 20 motors will be sharing space on a container. They will probably be on 1 or 2 pallets shrink-wrapped in plastic and sealed for customs. They could be at the very back of the container so our person may have to wait for the stuff in front to get cleared.
If we want those pallets to be shipped to a mid-country destination, as has already been mentioned, that would be additional shipping costs and as Dnum said, someone still has to receive them and hand bomb them from the back of the delivery truck to their house or garage.
So it might be best if our recipient is on the west coast in close proximity to a port which receives containers from China.It would mean he picked them up at the customs warehouse himself, otherwise there would be extra delivery costs to have them delivered to his house.
This person would then ship them out to the different addresses. Hopefully each motor will be in its own separate box suitable for shipping. Once the weight and package size is known, each person would have to look up their shipping cost and send those funds on to our recipient with an agreed on shipper like UPS so it would minimize the shipping hassle for him.
Since this is a group buy, I think a labor of love is the ticket here-no pay or profit for our volunteer.
I would volunteer but I am on the wrong side of the country!
Do we want to buy a couple extras for parts? What if one or two of the motors get crushed or damaged? If that were to happen and If we had ordered just 20, someone would be left out. Would someone be willing to order more than one with the understanding that they would be willing to pass it on if that were to happen?
So we need a west coast volunteer to not only receive the goods as described above, but also to be the sole contact with the supplier. We don't need 20 people constantly e-mailing them.