Shipping US to UK: Part 1

Porsche friends Steven and Hayden missing this week’s London-Casablanca rally due to shipping problems was a major let down. Not just for my buddies and the many interested Porsche enthusiasts across Europe and North America, but also in Hayden’s native Australia, where many friends and family were following his exploits with delight. The fail proved that, no matter how finely-tuned the logistics, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In this case, that weak link was the shippers.

Though I’ve collected a numbers of cars from shippers on behalf of friends, my Varmint 911SC’s journey from Los Angeles to London is the first time I have personally container-shipped anything. My experience says that it is definitely not “stick a box on a boat and pick it up at the other end”.

The first question is always: where to ship from? Varmint was bought in San Francisco, but all the shippers that I spoke to following recommendations from fellow R Gruppers were in LA. We would either have to transport Varmint to LA after purchase ($250) or drive it there ourselves to drop for shipping. I wanted to drive in San Francisco and felt that the less time spent out of my hands the better, so I opted to drive it to LA myself. This meant that I had to fly out of LA coming home, therefore I had to fly in to LA to get any sort of deal on a ticket and then fly north to San Fran. Sounds like a tiny thing but added cost and time – about $100 and 6 hours – to the process. In hindsight, I should have paid the premium to fly direct outbound, definitely what I’ll do in the future.

Choosing a shipper wasn’t easy. I spoke to a few guys who had used Schumacher quite happily, and for a while I swapped some emails with one of their guys in New Jersey. Things went well enough until I mentioned to best mate Rob Campbell at Raceresto.com that I was considering using them and he headed me off at the pass, talking about problems they had endured bringing classic race cars back from the US. A good friend in the Netherlands then had a problem involving a car which should have gone back across America ending up on a boat to Europe. The final straw was swapping some slightly abrasive emails with the UK end of the shipping chain – that finished Schumacher for me.

Rob recommended CARS, as he had used them quite successfully, but their prices were quite a bit higher. At this stage, I was a bit stumped.

Before buying Varmint, I’d been looking for an early 911 project, or something ‘74-’77 in narrow body guise. One of the cars I had considered was a seemingly rot-free roller ‘76 911S up in Seattle (red car above), which I had considered buying to backdate. The deal hadn’t come off, but the seller had recommended a shipping expert: Doug White at Able Cargo down in San Diego. I dropped Doug a line and we started talking. Turns out Doug is a Manchester boy who went out to California on a working holiday, started Able Cargo after French and UK friends asked him to help out with shipping and hasn’t looked back since.

Doug was totally my kind of guy. When he agreed to match Schumacher’s best quote, it was a no-brainer. On top of that, he was using Kingstown Shipping in the UK and I had dealt with Alan Shores there on a few occasions, last time on a Porsche World car importing article with good friend Andy Perk’s SC C3, which he shipped from the US east coast in 2008. Though not exactly FOC, Kingstown were quite a bit cheaper than the Schumacher UK end, which was another plus. Everything had fallen into place beautifully, so I confirmed arrangements and booked my flights. Part 1 was done.