The Road to Borneo – This is the Third Article in a Series Documenting our Borneo Equator Expedition 09 Trip

Shannon Bushman | November 11, 2009 | 1 Comment

I’m just old enough to remember seeing some of those old Bob Hope – Bing Crosby “On the Road..” pictures on late night TV.
They were hokey and corny and made me want to go to places like Singapore and Zanzibar. Not sure when I’ll make it to Zanzibar but Singapore was cool.
I guess Borneo will do for now, considering I get to take my RZR-S. I’m voting it better than Singapore already.

As it turns out all roads do not lead to Borneo. In fact none of them do and you almost can’t get there from here. The whole shipping ordeal was quite an education for me and I thought sharing some of the ins and outs might help future Expeditioneers achieve smooth sailing.

In a nutshell, when you decide to ship your rig overseas, plan on it going on a cargo container boat. Some folks will tell you to use air freight. I don’t recommend air freight. First it’s WAY expensive. Probably 7-8 times more expensive than sea shipping. I checked out air freight and found it was over $10,000 one way to Jakarta. The RZR was considered “Dangerous Goods”, which meant it needed to be in a special container which was going to cost me at least $2500 and the documentation alone was about $1,000. And even after you fork over all that cash the pilot can simply say “no” at the last minute and your rig isn’t going on his plane. And if he does, that is almost a given it won’t go on any other plane either. I think airplanes were meant for people not UTVs. Sea Shipping is much easier and they are use to shipping large items and vehicles on those big boats. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily easy.

Making it Easy

There are two segments to your shipping experience. If you live anywhere other than driving distance to a large port you will almost certainly be needing an inland operator to load your rig in a truck and deliver it to the big boat. If you use a large operator like Old Dominion Freight Lines they have an Export department that can handle your shipment door to door. They will make sure all the documentation is in place, pickup your rig on a truck, take it to the boat and make sure it ships. Sounds simple right? Its not. There a bunch of steps in there that they take care of so you don’t have to worry about them. Of course you need to leave plenty of time in this process to make sure your rig arrives on time. Time was something we really didn’t have on this adventure. In fact we only had two weeks form the time we made the decision to go until the RZR-S (in Expedition ready condition) needed to be delivered to the boat for shipment. I have to say that when we started calling around to nail down components for the build the response was fantastic. I think the idea was just wacky enough to get a yes when normally the process could take weeks. The majority of our parts shipped within a few days but by the time we started we had less than a week to complete the build and put it on a boat. ODFL tried to accommodate us but the rig needed to be in Long Beach CA on a Monday and we were still building on Saturday so you guessed it, I became the trucking company.

While we were scrambling to get everything assembled ODFL took care of a lot of paperwork. Here is a check list of items you need when shipping a UTV overseas.
Original Title, not a copy, the original
Original Bill of Sale
Commercial Invoice declaring the value of the vehicle.
Non-Hazardous Letter
Time: Expect at least 30 days between pickup and delivery
Accurate Weight and dimensions including crating

A good freighter will walk you through all of this. A bad one will dribble the details and requirements out to you as they need them leaving you scrambling to comply. This industry is FULL of shady operators so be careful. Do not accept the first bid you get as we found almost 100% difference in price and time to ship from different companies.
Companies like ODFL do not deal directly with the shipping lines. They deal with a freight forwarder. In our case, since I had to drive the RZR to Long Beach, I got to meet the wonderful people at Brennan who handled the RZR to make sure it was put on the boat. The way it works is that all the ODFLs of the world deliver their cargo to a few large warehouses where it may sit for a week or so while customs checks out your paperwork. While its there the warehouse manager is sizing it up deciding how to best fit all of the stuff in his warehouse into shipping containers. I delivered the RZR on a large palette in a skeleton crate. This made it easy for the freighter to deal with but in reality cost me more than it would have had I simply sent it to them rolling in neutral. They take ATVs and motorcycles that way all the time. They are good at fastening things to the floor of the containers. I didn’t want to risk possible damage in shipping since I had no idea what to expect so I boxed it up. Now, it is possible to get your own container or even a half container. A full container is 40 feet long and really expensive to ship. A half container is 20 feet long and just about right for shipping two UTVs. The nice thing about your own container is you control everything. Nobody is going to pile something next to your rig that might shift in transit and damage your precious baby. I opted for shipping “FAK” which is shipper lingo for Freight All Kinds and it means they put all sorts of different things into container with your UTV and ship them together. One shipper told me that you could not ship a UTV FAK. That turned out to be crap so don’t believe everything these guys tell you. Ask LOTS of questions.

Prepping the RZR for shipment was simple. Drain the fuel and disconnect the batteries. I taped the cable ends and posts to make sure no inadvertent reconnect/sparking happened during shipment. I’ll use the same crate and reverse the process to get it home. I zip ties the key under the dash in case the guys in Jakarta need to drive it somewhere. Just moments before the freighter forklift picked it up I shrink wrapped the whole crate. This 30 inch wide shrink wrap is available at Home Depot for $20 and I thought it might be a bit of deterrent to stick fingers. Probably not but it was lot of fun putting it on.

All total the shipping to Jakarta from LA was about $1250. The Title verification and documentation was $375. The crate cost another $100 in materials. Had I managed to be ready for ODFL to pickup the RZR in Odgen, Utah, it would have cost another $350 inland shipping. All in all less than I originally thought.