OK, I’ll do some Internyetting in a bit. Thanks for the pointer.
Look for LCL shipping this is your basic tea chest style shipping, I have done it UK to Taiwan but not the other way around. a couple of quick links below.
Some of the company’s you pay for the crate (price depending on size and destination). They drop it off in the morning, you fill it and they pick back up in the afternoon, once all the paperwork, payment is done, you get it delivered 1,2, 3 months later. others you build your own crate to and drop it at the port.
Remember if you build your own crate it needs to be structurally sound as others may be put on top of it. Different company have their own MO’s I prefer the ones that bring the crate or pod and take it away after, then your covers if it fails, the weight allowances are generous too.
How is LCL rate compared to door to door services? I assumed he’s looking for door to door (hence I suggested freight forwarders). I see Fedex/UPS has an ocean freight service as well (but I do not know if they are something an individual can use).
I had contacted a van line and the price they quoted is so expensive it’s basically not worth it. As in it was enough money to buy the items in question a few times over. I’m not sure what a van line does that justifies the expensive cost. They’re only worth it if you’re shipping pallets of gold bars… it was that expensive. If you were shipping gold bars in that quantity you wouldn’t be using a van line anyhow.
Link has a lot of “call to discuss rates” which is a bit of “if you gotta ask”.
But that chart you posted seem helpful. Is this per cubic meter?
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Thanks. Quite a lot of potentially useful detail.
I found an outfit that delivers pallets door to door and quotes Taiwan-UK, but didn’t get a quote yet since I dont yet know weight or volume. Thats slightly chicken and egg since I’ll have a better idea what I might ship when I have a clue what it might cost, but should be sortable.
“deliveries are kerbside-to-kerbside, and pallets must be placed on a hard and even surface (i.e concrete, tarmac). ”
“If your pallet will be travelling via Sea Freight, you can would be best to buy a shipping carton which is a pre-built wooden box to affix onto a pallet base. “
They are probably part-container consolidators, though those saying so seem more oriented to exporters rather than personal effects movers. E.G.
Maersk and others too,
Build Your Own Crate
One tip I can give you about building a crate, if you can make it vertical to almost reach the top of the container, nothing will be stacked on top.
Most people will go flat for stability but they get strapped in anyway, this obviously depends on what you’re sending. If your paying for M² 1x2 vertical is the same as 2x1 horizontal, if your paying for footprint its half the price.
This is not Taiwan based just an example of the type of company I was talking about who do the door to door crate, may be a touch more expensive but when you filter in the time and cost of making your own crate it can even out.
Not ruling out getting crates supplied, but come to think ont I have about a dozen crates as under-bed-platform storage at my room in Datan, knicked from the local illegal pyromaniac plastics recycling outfit one dark and sweaty night
(I only noticed the IR camera when leaving, but no comeback so far).
These are made of that Coroplast stuff, or something very like it, and since they wont all be going (I assume) I could probably cannibalise some of them for reinforcement, and/or cardboard, and/or papier mache, foam, bamboo, etc Particularly if I use bamboo strength shouldn’t be a problem for non-catastrophic/non-malicious damage, and it shouldn’t cost anything.
I think they are about 1.5 m cube, which should be big enough unless I try and send a motorcycle back (not planned) though I’ll have to check the size and acceptability to shippers,
I thought about a couple of the old vespers, I have a friends in Blighty who do them up, but still at the tinking stage on that one.
When I was first here there were quite a few abandoned Vespas around, which I coveted but couldnt legally acquire. Not seen an abandoned one for quite a while.
I have seen one or two around but also seen a couple for sale that would make the money back in Blighty.
Finally got around to doing something about this and its not looking good so far. Enquiries to 4 carriers have so far yielded 2 knock-backs.
The outfit above seemed like the best bet because they say on their website they move personal goods and the rates in the above table seem very reasonable. Their negative reply, contradicting their website, and my pointlessly stroppy response to it, are shown below. I expect further enquiries will get similar results if any.
On Friday, 20 June 2025 at 00:32:21 GMT-7, Bethan Wilkinson beth@dfsworldwide.com wrote:
Hi Ed,
Thank you for this enquiry but unfortunately we wouldn’t be able to assist with personal affects cargo, we can only handle cargo from a registered business in the UK with an EORI number to a registered business in Taiwan.
Kind Regards,
Bethan Wilkinson (Beth)
Internal sales
Unit 7, Marlin Park, Central Way,
Feltham, London, TW14 0AN
Wechat: Beth_Wilkinson_95
Mobile/Whatsapp: 07534319637
Email: beth@dfsworldwide.com
Web: www.dfsworldwide.com
Hi Beth
This is definitely NOT what your website says .
For example
Has a rates table showing LCL - TAIWAN TO UK from POL Kaohsiung, Keelung and Taichung to Felixstowe, and the text contains phrases such as
“LCL shipping is a cost-effective solution for businesses or individuals ”
“1. We can offer door-to-door services from Taiwan to the UK using a range of reliable carriers, many of which are based on direct services. ”
“ For Customers
Are you a small business owner looking to ship goods internationally? Or an individual relocating to a new country? Our LCL services are tailored to meet your unique shipping needs. With flexible scheduling options and personalized support, we make the shipping process hassle-free, allowing you to focus on what matters most – your business or your move.”
If you do not in fact cater for shipping Taiwan to UK, OR non-business customers, as your reply suggests, perhaps you should avoid multiple explicit claims that you do on your website
Regards, Ed Lithgow”
Its looking like surface shipping of personal effects may be a dead duck, which indeed was my impression before I started this line of enquiry.
For a small shipment the post office is probably the best choice. If you can stretch it up to 3 cubic metres there are plenty of companies that will ship it
Well, 3 cu m is quite a lot, but some companies deal 0.5, 1, 2 or 3 Cu M minima, so I suppose they’d charge that and it wouldn’t matter what you actually were shipping if below minimum. The more important factor seems to be the 2 replying so far (and probably many others) dont want non business customers, despite marketing statements to the contrary.
Did you ever sort your tools out!
This enquiry was mostly for the tools, but since I thought there might be a 2 cubic metre minimum (that table has 2 CBM in it, though I’m not sure why, and at 128 GBP appeared to be pretty cheap) I thought I’d probably add to the shipment. Since that website seems to be fictional it may not be economic to ship the tools after all.
I tried registering with freightos.com, apparently a shipping comparison site
“Compare real-time shipping rates from 30+ forwarders”
It lets you enter an explicitly declared domestic premises (one of the drop down menu options) as source and destination address, but when/if you select “personal possessions” in the description field, it flags up a warning that quotes arent available for personal possessions or hazardous goods.
I wonder if this comes from “The Authorities”, since private shipments are probably harder to police, though it could just be they are considered to be too troublesome with a lower likeliehood of repeat business.
An offer of a support call popped up in my email so if that actually happens I’ll see what they say.
Perhaps an even simpler reason is that private punters will pay a lot more so need to be kept separate from business users.
already linked above as an example of shippers supplying crates, (though probably not from Taiwan) do a small crate at 96cm/35 inches (W), 187cm/73 inches (H), 111cm/43 inches (D) which is 2 CM or 64 cu ft, the same volume as the example LCL quoted as 128GBP Taiwan to UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyZtTdMT8GU&t=317s*
This example shipment UK to Brisbane cost 780 GBP
I shipped a load of stuff back in 2020 when I returned to the UK via a Taiwanese shipping company based in Taipei - as an individual, not a business. They also took care of making the crates. There was an additional fee for a company in the UK who shipped it to my door from the port it landed at.
I posted the company details in a thread recently about shipping stuff abroad here (as well as around the time I left).
I would recommend them.
Regarding tools - I would not ship heavy tools unless they were included in a load of stuff you want to ship back that cannot be easily replaced over there.
My expensive stuff was posted via the post office, which is only air mail as surface mail ended about 15 years ago to the UK. On trips to Hong Kong I used to send a load of surface mail to the UK - 20KG at a time. Recall getting a bike on a flight and sending it as surface at the airport in HK.
My super expensive stuff was with me on the flight.