Shipping from Australia

[ward00]

Does anyone have experience shipping Heavy/bulky Fiat parts from Australia. I have sourced a number of 124 sport coupe body parts for reasonable prices, but I cant find any shipping options that wont bankrupt my bank. Example, 100 pound front hood costs $3000 in shipping.

[brettule]

Welcome to our world. It costs us a small fortune to get Spider parts shipped from the US to Australia, seems on fair it's painful going the opposite direction Soz.

[MattVAS]

Ok so as someone who ships to Australia just about everyday let me jump in.

Your hood.... it is not that is is heavy but that it is LARGE. Also you don't ship often with any freight company so you won't be getting a discount. Sadly to ship body parts over the Pacific Ocean it is just going to run lots of money. Now to "reduce" that shipping some you could switch from Air Freight to Ocean Freight. This will increase your shipping time though to about 4-6 weeks, but boats cost about 1/2 what planes do for shipping.

Now for why US to Australia and Australia to US is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO expensive. So the big reason is the big body of water obviously. But the back side hidden reason is the common wealth people. Simply put the US is not part of the common wealth group, which makes shipping appear unfair or high. Since we don't have that relationship shipping fees are not subsidized and therefore are basically at the current global cost. But if you're shipping to/from the UK - Australia then the costs are greatly reduced due to that friendly (we didn't kill each other) relationship.

Hope that clears some of this up.

[ward00]

So that's why the same used body part from Europe can be shipped for $100 (a bumper for instance) and from Australia it costs $1500. Putting aside EU trade partners and what not, my feel is that Australia is trying to wall itself off from the rest of the world. It's their problem, not mine, since I sourced a NOS 75 124 Sport Coupe trunk lid from Italy, and yes, for a $100 shipping cost to California.

[ward00]

and I might add, with a 4 day delivery time.

[18Fiatsandcounting]

To add to what Matt mentioned, a large part of what might be going on is the "last mile" effect of deliveries. At least domestically, a significant portion of the shipping cost for an item is in the delivery trucks (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.) that drive around all day.

Many, many moons ago I shipped 6 entire Fiat 124 spiders from the port in Long Beach, CA to the port in Bremerhafen, Germany. It was by boat, but it was also amazingly cheap. Around $300 per car. Admittedly, I had to transport the cars to Long Beach and load them all into a single High-Cube container, but still. My contact in Germany picked them up at Bremerhafen and delivered them to their destination.

So, it's a long shot, but you might see if you can find out what it would cost to ship the part from a port (terminal) in Australia to a port (terminal) near you. Given that you're in Santa Cruz, the port of Oakland might be an option for you just to pick it up, assuming they even allow this sort of stuff nowadays. Of course, you'd also have to arrange to get the part from your seller in Australia to a nearby port.

Not sure I've made things any easier...!

-Bryan

[DieselSpider]

Are we talking about purchasing a hood from Australia and having it shipped to California or the opposite?

[ward00]

From Australia to US. Its a moot point, I found a NOS one in Italy. Like I said, with shipping it cost 1/3 the price it would have if shipped from Australia.

[toyfiats]

I sourced a NOS 75 124 Sport Coupe trunk lid from Italy, and yes, for a $100 shipping cost to California.

That's a GREAT find. CC series Coupe trunk lids are hard to find.

[DieselSpider]

From Australia to US. Its a moot point, I found a NOS one in Italy. Like I said, with shipping it cost 1/3 the price it would have if shipped from Australia.

Yes it would be cheaper from Italy to the US. I will be needing some Isuzu 4FB1 Diesel Engine parts which are more popular in Australia than in the US however shipping makes it cost prohibitive.